Gender Inequality in Chatbots & How to Create An Empowering Space for Female Chatbots

In honour of International Women’s Day, the team at Noodle Factory would like to shed light on female chatbots in the male-dominated technology and AI space

Within the last decade, we’ve witnessed the creation of many female characters as virtual assistants, including Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft Cortana, as well as feminine voices like Google Assistant and Apple Siri.

According to Brookings, approximately 92.4% of America’s smartphone assistants market share which includes Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant, use female-sounding voices. Although the virtual assistants have since been updated to offer male-sounding voice options, they were launched with a female-sounding voice which has remained the norm.

Have you ever wondered why this is the case? A common argument is that AI chatbots play roles that are commonly filled by women. Unsurprisingly, this is due to the gender stereotypes seen in real-life and the fact that there are more male developers than female ones.