Ask HN: Why are most voice interfaces female?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12197649

by dmritard96 • 10 years ago

20 13 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Alexa, Siri, Cortana, 'Ok Google' all have female voices. Is this random chance, a symptom of something more systematic?

setra• 10 years ago

I imagine it's because of the male tendency to make things they build female. Boats, AI, Cars, etc.

dmritard962• 10 years ago

lol. my old boat name was 'grunt slayer', I guess it could be female, never really thought about it.

mtmail• 10 years ago

Why computer voices are mostly female http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-com... gives a couple of reason, from biology, history and "It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes"

dmritard962• 10 years ago

Interesting. Its also interesting how much of a gender construct can come through. Listening to music often times I can't tell male from female but with spoken words it always seems obvious.

BjoernKW• 10 years ago

This likely depends on the music genre and voice effects applied to the vocal track.

Usually, telling if a singer is male or female isn't any more difficult than it is for speakers. While in singing there's considerable overlap in ranges between male and female voice types, the overtones produced by a male singer differ from those produced by a female singer. A C5 sung by a tenor will sound very different from a C5 sung by a soprano.

That said, especially in pop music there's the tendency for male singers to use their falsetto register, which tends to sound 'feminine' or androgynous. Moreover, in pop music you also have an abundant use of voice filters and synthesizers such as the infamous vocoders that make distinguishing voice types more difficult.

gvb• 10 years ago

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty

Lots of [citation needed], but interesting historical background on voice warning systems.

mbrock• 10 years ago

I think the genderedness of this kind of labor explains much of it.... try Google Image Search for "secretary" or "assistant".

https://www.google.com/search?q=secretary&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=assistant&tbm=isch

Mz• 10 years ago

It may partly be simply because in Star Trek the ship's computer had a female voice. I would guess that many companies do not actually put a great deal of research into selecting the voice, but go with what is familiar without wondering why it was historically done that way and whether or not it was a good idea. When you do research it, there are valid reasons to go with a woman's voice. But I strongly suspect most companies do not actually put substantial resources into the decision.

1123581321• 10 years ago

Anecdotally, I find higher-pitched voices easier to hear.

yompers888• 10 years ago

Anecdotally, I have an instructor whose teaching I can't stand, despite her excellent teaching style, because her voice feels like it's hitting the resonant frequency of my head, and I get a headache after 40 or so minutes.

HeyLaughingBoy• 10 years ago

There is an excellent, if dated, Nova episode called "Top Gun and Beyond" that addresses this. Navy research showed that the (all male) fighter pilots responded much faster to a female voice, so that's what they put in the voice alerts.

This is a minor point in the program, though. It's really one of my favorite Nova episodes and I recommend it to anyone.

andymurd• 10 years ago

I worked on automation of some of the PA announcements used on railway stations in the UK, e.g. "The next train from platform 4 is the...". These were recorded sets of words and phrases that could be concatenated to sound quite natural and the content of most were very dull.

Every sound file was recorded in a male version and a female version although the female was used almost all the time. I asked about this and was told the following:

* Women respond equally to male and female voices

* Men instinctively rebel against petty instruction given in a male voice... unless...

* In a threatening situation (fire, football riot etc) orders in a male voice are trusted more

I don't know how true any of this really is when applied in the real world, but maybe the similar studies have been applied to conversational interfaces.

freestockoption• 10 years ago

History of the male/female BART voices: http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090309

Ask HN: Why are most voice interfaces female?

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