Do people perceive male and female artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents’ voices differently?

The potential for the design of artificial intelligence (AI) conversational agents to reinforce gender-based stereotypes was recently highlighted in a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report. Addressing this issue requires knowledge of how male and female conversational agents’ voices are perceived. Consequently, we investigated whether male and female conversational agents’ voices are perceived differently for a range of traits commonly investigated in studies of natural human stimuli (trustworthy, emotionally stable, responsible, sociable, caring, attractive, intelligent, confident, weird, unhappy, mean, aggressive, dominant, competent, old, masculine, feminine). Male voices were rated as significantly more aggressive, dominant, mean, and masculine than female voices and were also rated significantly older. Female voices were rated as significantly more feminine than male voices. These differences in how male and female conversational agents’ voices are perceived may be usefully applied to the design of conversational agents to reduce their effects on gender-based stereotypes. This research was supported by the EPSRC grant ‘Designing Conversational Assistants to Reduce Gender Bias’ (EP/T023783/1), awarded to Benedict Jones. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.