Alexa, Google, Siri: What are Your Pronouns? Gender and Anthropomorphism in the Design and Perception of Conversational Assistants

Technology companies have produced varied responses to concerns about the\neffects of the design of their conversational AI systems. Some have claimed\nthat their voice assistants are in fact not gendered or human-like -- despite\ndesign features suggesting the contrary. We compare these claims to user\nperceptions by analysing the pronouns they use when referring to AI assistants.\nWe also examine systems' responses and the extent to which they generate output\nwhich is gendered and anthropomorphic. We find that, while some companies\nappear to be addressing the ethical concerns raised, in some cases, their\nclaims do not seem to hold true. In particular, our results show that system\noutputs are ambiguous as to the humanness of the systems, and that users tend\nto personify and gender them as a result.\n