““I’m a virtual assistant so I don’t have pronouns the way people do, thanks for asking”: gender neutrality, diversification and fluidity in AI” presented by Costa, Ribas and Carvalhais

“I’m a virtual assistant so I don’t have pronouns the way people do, thanks for asking”: gender neutrality, diversification and fluidity in AI

This paper questions how current digital assistants tend to be feminized through their anthropomorphization and humanization, discussing possibilities for countering this phenomenon. It draws on a previous study on the relationship between gender and AI, complemented by an analysis of Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant and Siri. Furthering this discussion, we address the main ques-tions, justifications and suggestions raised by researchers and academics as well as online media coverage when ex-amining the phenomenon. One of the main questions re-lates to how these assistants evade this topic by claiming to have no gender or to be gender neutral. Thus, this paper discusses possible approaches to deal with gender attrib-ution in AI, by looking into recent trends that range from gender neutrality and diversification to queering these entities. On the one hand, digital assistants could be more diversified and include male counterparts or alter-natives, on the other, we discuss how our understandings of gender are expanding beyond binary conceptions and how digital assistants can accompany more fluid concep-tions of gender. Particularly, this paper debates how the development of this technology could be informed by current discussions in queer theory and new media stud-ies, inciting reflection on how digital assistants reflect our social and cultural views back to us.