Creating Inclusive Voices for the 21st Century: A Non-Binary Text-to-Speech for Conversational Assistants

Danielescu, Andreea; Horowit-Hendler, Sharone A; Pabst, Alexandria; Stewart, Kenneth; Gallo, Eric M; Aylett, Matthew P.

doi:10.1145/3544548.3581281

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…However, this is not yet the reality. The majority of voice assistants on the market have a feminine name [37] and are represented as feminine [38]. This however contributes to the potential replication of stereotypes as the mostly female voice fulfills the social role of a servant, which in some cases is heavily sexualized and degraded [39].…”

Section: Diverse (And Inclusive) Perspective On Sexualized Interactio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While a more optimistic view conceptualized the female artificial voice as the new superpower who is able to answer all imaginable questions within milliseconds, it still needs to be highlighted that this might be more important in the realm of non-arousal-oriented tasks. While first voice assistant systems are equipped with the option to switch to a masculine artificial voice [33], a notable gap exists in the availability of voices that encompass the complete spectrum of gender presentations, including non-binary or gender-ambiguous voices [37].…”

Section: Diverse (And Inclusive) Perspective On Sexualized Interactio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Usage of Voice in Sexualized Interactions with Technologies and Sexual Health Communication: An Overview

Szczuka,

Mühl

2024

Curr Sex Health Rep

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Purpose of Review The present overview addresses the importance of voice in human-technology interactions within the sexual realm. It introduces empirical evidence within two key domains: (a) sexualized interactions involving artificial entities and (b) communication about sexuality-related health. Moreover, the review underscores existing research gaps. Recent Findings Theories and first empirical studies underline the importance of voice within sexualized interactions with voice assistants or conversational agents as social cues. However, research on voice usage in sexual health-related contexts reveals contradicting results, mainly because these technologies ask users to vocalize potentially sensitive topics. Summary Although the utilization of voice in technology is steadily advancing, the question of whether voice serves as the optimal medium for social interactions involving sexually related artificial entities and sexual health-related communication remains unanswered. This uncertainty stems from the fact that certain information must be conveyed verbally, which could also be communicated through alternative means, such as text-based interactions.

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Section: Diverse (And Inclusive) Perspective On Sexualized Interactio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Diverse (And Inclusive) Perspective On Sexualized Interactio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Usage of Voice in Sexualized Interactions with Technologies and Sexual Health Communication: An Overview

Szczuka,

Mühl

2024

Curr Sex Health Rep

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“…Even without any gender markers, people still apply binary gender to dialogue systems (Aylett et al, 2019;Sutton, 2020), as was the case for the 'genderless' voice assistant Q. While some companies now have begun to offer greater diversity of voices and have moved away from default female-gendered voices (Iyengar, 2021), nonbinary or gender-ambiguous dialogue systems such as SAM (Danielescu et al, 2023) are almost nonexistent, leaving people who identify as such without representation. Summarizing West et al (2019), UNESCO (2019) argue that that encouraging or enabling users to predominantly gender systems as female reinforces gender stereotypes of women as inferior to men:…”

Section: Consequences Of Anthropomorphismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirages. On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems

Abercrombie,

Curry,

Dinkar

et al. 2023

Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

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Automated dialogue or conversational systems are anthropomorphised by developers and personified by users. While a degree of anthropomorphism may be inevitable due to the choice of medium, conscious and unconscious design choices can guide users to personify such systems to varying degrees. Encouraging users to relate to automated systems as if they were human can lead to high risk scenarios caused by over-reliance on their outputs. As a result, natural language processing researchers have investigated the factors that induce personification and develop resources to mitigate such effects. However, these efforts are fragmented, and many aspects of anthropomorphism have yet to be explored. In this paper, we discuss the linguistic factors that contribute to the anthropomorphism of dialogue systems and the harms that can arise, including reinforcing gender stereotypes and notions of acceptable language. We recommend that future efforts towards developing dialogue systems take particular care in their design, development, release, and description; and attend to the many linguistic cues that can elicit personification by users. * Equal contribution. † Now at Google DeepMind.

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