It took (only) six years for bots to start ditching outdated gender stereotypes

If Apple’s Siri launched today, one wonders if it would still be designed as a slightly sassy, demure female assistant. Maybe not. While Amazon’s Alexa (2014), Siri (2011), and Microsoft’s Cortana (2013, named after a nude character in the video game Halo) staked out their identities years ago, the world is changing. New bot startups are steering away from deferential, mildly flirtatious females toward a more balanced mix of genders and, in many cases, casting off human genders altogether. Bot’s gender is more than an idle question. Bots are “the new app,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, ready to inject themselves into our daily lives. VentureBeat reports that in 2016 more than 30,000 branded chatbots were launched, and the growth is still accelerating as businesses deploy chatbots across most major sectors from customer service to e-commerce. As self-driving cars, virtual assistants and customer service bots enter our lives, dozens of our daily interactions now handled by humans will be the province of algorithms. We may build our biases, as well as our virtues, into our creations. “The thinking is that the best bots are as close to humans as possible,” says Dror Oren, the chief product officer and co-founder of…


Link to Full Article: It took (only) six years for bots to start ditching outdated gender stereotypes

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