| > It's extremely off-putting that the only software we give human names to is the software we boss around, and when we do give it a name, the name is always female. That's not true though. Just a cursory glance at the Play Store with the search term "voice assistant"[0] reveals mostly gender neutral with some male and female. I "equalled" the female names and plussed the male names: Dragon Mobile Assistant; =Cortana – Digital assistant; Indigo Virtual Assistant; Smart Voice Assistant; OK Google; =Robin - AI Voice Assistant; DataBot Assistant; =EVA Free - Voice Assistant; utter! Voice Commands BETA!; voice Assistant; +Jarvis - My Personal Assistant; Google Allo; Extreme: Personal Assistant; =AIVC (Alice); HOUND Voice Search & Assistant; Google Now Launcher; Genie; =Amazon Alexa; My Assistant; Heaveen; +SpeakBro; +ANDY Voice Assistant (FREE); Cyman Mark 2 Free; +Noah Voice Assistant Beta; My Android Assistant; AVX Free - Voice Assistant; Moto Voice; +EVAN Free - Voice Assistant; Voice Assistant; Get Assistant - Root Tally: 5 female and 5 male with 20 gender neutral including some arguable, e.g., "Cyman" (Simon?) and Robin. This isn't the most scientific thing but it certainly exposes the assertion "the name is always female" for what it is. The really unfortunate thing is this erroneous belief is so ingrained that half the comments here are bike shedding about this exact point instead of discussing how cool this piece of software is. Not that I'm helping that problem. [0]https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results... |