Nicole Holliday, Ph.D. – assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a survey asking over 480 English speakers to rate the four available voice options for Siri. The categories were based on character traits: funniness, professionalism, competence, and friendliness.

After her survey, Holliday discovered that users’ reactions to the voice option directly reflected gender and racial stereotypes that they held to be true. For example, the voice that users believed sounded most like a Black man was rated funniest but also perceived as the “less professional” and “less competent” sounding voice.

“The voice gets the same negative stereotypes we assign to Black men,” Holliday says.

The standard option for Siri’s voice was not judged much differently from other voices related to white people. Holliday found that many people assign identities based on what they hear concerning their human experience with others.

“Whenever you hear a voice, and you don’t see a body attached to it, you imagine one,” Holliday explained. “Our ability to classify voices like this is part of our language faculty.”

While the classification of voices can be frustrating when understanding the history behind forced assimilation, Holliday suggests there is no practicality in disassociating the gender or race from a digital voice. Intentional or not, people automatically try to assign an identity to what they hear.

prejudice

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