Alexa, Google, Siri: What are Your Pronouns? Gender and Anthropomorphism in the Design and Perception of Conversational Assistants

TL;DR

This study investigates how users perceive gender and human-like qualities in conversational AI, revealing discrepancies between company claims and user perceptions, with users often personifying and gendering AI assistants despite ambiguous outputs.

Contribution

It provides an empirical comparison of company claims and user perceptions regarding gender and anthropomorphism in conversational AI systems.

Findings

Users tend to personify and gender AI assistants.

System outputs are ambiguous about humanness.

Company claims about non-gendered AI often do not align with user perceptions.

Abstract

Technology companies have produced varied responses to concerns about the effects of the design of their conversational AI systems. Some have claimed that their voice assistants are in fact not gendered or human-like -- despite design features suggesting the contrary. We compare these claims to user perceptions by analysing the pronouns they use when referring to AI assistants. We also examine systems' responses and the extent to which they generate output which is gendered and anthropomorphic. We find that, while some companies appear to be addressing the ethical concerns raised, in some cases, their claims do not seem to hold true. In particular, our results show that system outputs are ambiguous as to the humanness of the systems, and that users tend to personify and gender them as a result.