ChatGPT Is More Likely to Be Perceived as Male Than Female

TL;DR

This study reveals that people generally perceive ChatGPT as male, but this perception can be reversed when feminine attributes are emphasized, highlighting gender biases in AI perception.

Contribution

The paper provides empirical evidence of gender bias in perceptions of ChatGPT and demonstrates how highlighting different attributes influences perceived gender.

Findings

People perceive ChatGPT as male in most contexts.

Perception of male gender persists across various methods of elicitation.

Highlighting feminine attributes can reverse the perceived gender.

Abstract

We investigate how people perceive ChatGPT, and, in particular, how they assign human-like attributes such as gender to the chatbot. Across five pre-registered studies (N = 1,552), we find that people are more likely to perceive ChatGPT to be male than female. Specifically, people perceive male gender identity (1) following demonstrations of ChatGPT's core abilities (e.g., providing information or summarizing text), (2) in the absence of such demonstrations, and (3) across different methods of eliciting perceived gender (using various scales and asking to name ChatGPT). Moreover, we find that this seemingly default perception of ChatGPT as male can reverse when ChatGPT's feminine-coded abilities are highlighted (e.g., providing emotional support for a user).