| Story | Tech companies gender their voice assistants as female because research shows that when people need help, they prefer to hear it delivered in a female voice. However, they prefer a male voice when it comes to authoritative statements. (crazy right?) In response to this, Unilever’s beauty brand, LUX, is launching a new campaign called ‘Shut Up, Sexism’ - aimed at highlighting how sexist attitudes are encouraged by the fact that most major AI home assistants and voice assistants have a female voice by default. And these female voiced AI systems are often at the front line of verbal aggression (mostly from men). The beauty brand is taking a stand against casual sexism by identifying something rather interesting: quite often sexist behaviour starts at home, when people think nobody is listening. The way people (men) talk to their AI assistants can spread into the rest of their communication and how they talk to real people, real women. The new activation hacks home assistants to ‘give them a voice’ to counter sexist remarks with witty replies - making the men who insult and swear at their virtual assistants think twice before doing so. |