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Why is Siri female (in the US at least)?

by Steven Sande Nov 8th 2011 at 4:30PM

Have you ever wondered why most of the default voices for computers are female? Although Siri is male in the UK and France, it's female in the U.S., Australia, and Germany. CNN's Brandon Griggs pondered this question in a post last month, and found that -- among other things -- people find women's voices more pleasing than men's.

Griggs quoted Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of a book about human-machine relationships, as saying "It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes. It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices."

According to Nass, this preference starts in the womb, as fetuses react to the sound of their mother's voice but not to other female voices or their father's voices. Another reason could be that telephone operators have traditionally been female, so people are used to getting assistance from a woman's voice -- realizing that certain age iPhone users and younger may have never heard a real, live telephone operator.

There are other theories. Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. believes that tech companies try to stay away from the sound of male computer voices due to the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL's soothing male voice didn't cover the fact that he was insane and intent on killing his human crew mates.

The post goes on to state that many experts expect that Siri will come with a choice of voices, accents and genders someday, so that if you're a little peeved with "her" voice right now, you can replace it with a voice more to your liking.

Speech technology firm Nuance's director of advanced speech design thinks that in the future there's a "huge opportunity for personalization. I could have an approximation of my wife's voice read me a text message in my car."



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Have you ever wondered why most of the default voices for computers are female?
 

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MNL_BSCHF

What does this sentence mean: "Another reason could be that telephone operators have traditionally been female, so people are used to getting assistance from a woman's voice -- realizing that certain age iPhone users and younger may have never heard a real, live telephone operator." Isn't the second part contradicting to the first?? (I'm not a native English speaker!)

November 09 2011 at 11:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daws

Sounds like they just made some stuff up. I'm curious what the UK and French Siri sounds like now. I hope they do offer different genders/accents. I would like a british butler type of assistant who says "Cheerio my good man!". Make it happen Apple!

November 09 2011 at 8:35 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
clasqm

Americans aspire to a job that comes with a (female) PA.

Brits aspire to the services of a butler.

How that works out with the French I couldn't say

November 09 2011 at 3:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Josh Nash

Its not limited to those countries. A coworker and her partner both have iphone 4s', and his voice is female and hers is male.

November 09 2011 at 12:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
D R

Sure, I'm programmed from before birth to listen and get advice and wisdom from females, yet now, when I ask a female to lean into my van to give me directions on a map, they look at me funny and take down my description and license plate.

November 08 2011 at 11:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hfwbr

Sometimes people are just too darned an(alytic)al.

Early in my iPhone usage days I made ringtones using Alex's voice that announce who's calling, and tied them to favorite contacts: when John calls, Alex announces, "John's calling." Helps a lot. Why did I choose the male Alex voice? Because it's the most easily distinguished. Period. And while there may be other rationalizations for choosing the voice of one gender or another for Siri, I would bet this is the #1 criterion in that case as well.

November 08 2011 at 11:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Meredith McKay

France is a delightfully gay land, and perhaps that applies to the UK as well.

November 08 2011 at 10:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MetallicAfan

GlaDOS voice?

November 08 2011 at 10:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
maclabop

Yeah, have to agree with a previous poster, I want a Jarvis in my phone. Then I just need to build me an iron man suit.

November 08 2011 at 8:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sip

It's so all the men can stroke their iPhone and whisper "I love you" to Siri -- don't know about men in the UK though. Glad to say I haven't heard one man yet say that to his phone.

November 08 2011 at 8:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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