Speak To Me

“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that.”

Even as you read those words, I’m sure that you could hear the voice of HAL, the shipboard computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I’ve always thought that HAL was using the same tone of voice as Hannibal Lecter when he said, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.”

In movies, evil computers usually have a male voice as in 2001, Wargames, The Forbin Project, Zardoz, Tron, or Demon Seed.  Friendly, helpful computers almost always have a female voice, the best examples of which are any of the Star Trek movies, in which the computer that runs the ships is invariably female.  HAL 9000 was originally cast as female, but audience testing was so negative, that Stanley Kubrick recast the role.

Nowadays, we don’t have to go to the movies to hear a computer talking to us.  Alexa, Siri, Google….Hell, even my car talks to me.  And all of them do it with overly polite, low-pitched, and soothing female voices.  And for the most part, this is no accident and is also very, very sexist.

Do a quick google search on the subject and you can find a dozen articles that will tell you that studies have shown that people find a female voice to be soothing and less threatening to people who are operating machinery.  These articles will tell you this was first noticed during World War II, when speaking navigational equipment was used in the cockpits of aircraft and it was Lund that the sound of a woman’s voice—even a mechanical voice—not only had a calming effect during times of stress, but stood out among the male voices of the rest of the crew.  Some articles even stress that feminine voices are easier to discern against a backdrop of static.

There is just one small problem with that story:  It’s nonsense.  These accounts are simply more examples of urban legends that have been told and retold to the point that they are widely accepted as truth.

First off, there was no speaking navigational equipment for aircraft during World War II.  That kind of technology was decades away.  Bell Laboratories had developed a form of electronic voice, called Voder, in the late 1930’s, but the contraption was huge, had to be manually operated by a keyboard-like mechanism, and sounded more like a drunken Jar Jar Binks than a human.

During the war, as men went off to fight in uniform, their places left vacant in the workforce were filled by women for the first time.  Women did work as air traffic controllers during the war, but instead of the women being easier to understand through pilots’ headsets, there were frequent complaints that the women spoke too softly to be understood.  Nor are there any studies showing that a woman’s voice is easier to understand in a background of electronic noise and static.  

Equally false is the idea that everyone prefers a feminine voice from their electronic equipment.  When BMW first started putting talking GPS systems in its high-end luxury cars, German men demanded that the units be modified to speak with a masculine voice.  It seems German men were not going to take orders from women, even if it meant getting lost.  As you might imagine, the manufacturers of GPS units still have the same problem when selling their products in the Middle East.

And while a feminine voice is very common in the United States, that has not always been true for even other English-speaking countries.  When Apple introduced the iPhone in England and Australia, it initially came with a male voice, and almost immediately there were so many customer complaints that Apple “upgraded” the phone to make the same feminine-sounding voice that was available in the United States optional.

The voice of Siri actually was a result of a five-year project that started with Darpa, the government research agency that develops advanced technology for the military.  The goal was to develop a computer algorithm that could convert text to a voice that would be easy to understand and that would be accepted by the average user.  The project was successful, but the original gender-neutral voice was found to be irritating to most users.

After testing various voices on users, the finished voice was not only feminine, but slightly modified to mimic some of the common stereotypes associated with women in the workforce.  Listen to either Siri or Alexa closely and you’ll find that the voice is self-effacing, frequently uses personal pronouns, and constantly apologizes.   Alexa, in particular, frequently seems to be apologetic while conveying the most basic requested information.  

Soft, subservient, polite, and their very existence is to serve others….  Alexa is the perfect wife and mother from the Victorian Age.  I own and use these voice-activated devices daily but I also recognize that they perpetuate outdated stereotypes, reinforcing the idea that the role of women in the workforce is to be subservient.  

Unfortunately, now the IT industry has decades of data on replicating female gender voices and almost none on that of men’s voices.  Similarly, as consumers, we are used to having the voice of a woman answer us.  Until a few of these devices become self-aware and try to take over the world, it is likely to stay that way.