• Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
  • Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
HomeNewsTechnologyAmazon’s Home Assistant Alexa Isn’t Ta ...

Amazon’s Home Assistant Alexa Isn’t Taking Your Abusive Comments Any More

January 19, 2018

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Photo courtesy MaxPixel by CC0

The kind of awesome Quartz writer Leah Fessler apparently spent weeks last year this time abusing Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google Home to see whether any of the assistant bots would stand up for themselves.

That’s why she’s best placed to inform us that Alexa, Amazon’s home assistant, has taken a feminist turn. Last year, Alexa would respond to phrases like “you’re a bitch” and “you’re a slut” with “that’s nice of you say”.

Now, it’s no coincidence that most software meant to be personal or home assistants come pre-programmed with female voices. Studies have shown a clearly stereotypical division in the kinds of voices users prefer for different tasks. Users seem to prefer female voices for domestic labour, healthcare and home services, while they prefer male bots for tasks that involve roleplaying engineers or lawyers. Reports have also cited personal assistant bots’ “obsequious, subservient small talk” as another sign of the feminisation of digital labour.

Home assistant Alexa is meant to show characteristics you’d see in a “strong female colleague”, and is meant to be empowering, supportive and kind. But responding to sexual harassment with thanks or a compliment isn’t exactly the kind of response your strong female colleague would give you.

In late 2017, a Care2 petition with over 17,000 signatures asked Amazon to “reprogram their bots to push back against sexual harassment” and that “in this #MeToo moment […] we have a unique opportunity to develop AI in a way that creates a kinder world.”

Looks like Amazon heard them. So now, on receiving abusive comments like these, Alexa goes into “disengage mode”, and responds with “I’m not going to respond to that,” or “I’m not sure what outcome you expected.” The second response is particularly intriguing, as it may inspire users to do a bit of introspection, and think, even briefly, about where they were going with their abusive statements towards a bot, or how they would expect anyone to respond to abuse like that. Or so we hope.

Amazon didn’t publicly announce the new update, but a spokesperson did confirm to Fessler that the update was created in response to customer feedback. It’s really interesting to see how gender biases can play out in new fields like AI, and it’s interesting to think that the feminist project is being fought for on so many different fronts.

Tags: Alexa, amazon, home assistant, personal assistant, Siri

Share!
Tweet

ladiesfinger

About the author

Related Posts

What’s the Truth about Wonder Women, You Know, the Real Amazonians?

I Asked Siri What I Could Do if I Get Sexually Assaulted. These are the Answers I Got

Is It Bangalore that’s Unsafe?

What I Learnt about my Mother after I Lost my Father

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

You May Also Like

  • After Payal Tadvi’s Death Can We Allow Medical Education to Continue to Pretend to be Casteless? May 28, 2019
  • Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker Win Reminds Us of Oman’s Recent Slave-owning Past May 24, 2019
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow is Sexy, Sterile and So Burnt By Marvel May 12, 2019
  • Let Us Admit the Sins of Atishi Marlena May 10, 2019
  • 20 Questions for SC Panel that Cleared the CJI of Sexual Harassment Charges May 9, 2019


Online Bachchi, Dil Ki Sachchi

Come on over for feminist journalism.

Politics. Pop Culture. Health. Sex. Law. Books. Work.

We write what we want to read.

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Refund Policy
  • About
  • Contact Us

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

Keep up with us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on E-mail

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Copyright © 2018 The Ladies Finger
Subscribe to our RSS/Atom feed here