According to the reports we have gotten from our sources, Google has provided its Assistant with an update and a mobile app which is able to assign various colours to its different AI voice options. This update is already being distributed among citizens of the United States who use the English option. Any voice option will carry a different colour and each colour was randomly selected by Google in order that no colour will be associated with any gender or tone.
Long before this update came, what Google did was to list the eight available voices that it has as “Voice 1,” “Voice 2” in that order and then it interchanged in between male and female voices as users tap through the list. With this update, the tech giant will assign a colour to each one you can scroll through beginning from the left to the right in a carousel layout.
This appears to be a more innovative idea to avoid the trap of having to use a female voice all the time just like Amazon did with Alexa and Apple did with Siri when they were released at first. Although, users are now able to change the wake word and voice options for Alexa, and Apple on its part added a male voice for Siri two years after the Assistant was launched. However, it seems that the use of a feminine voice for AI assistants has become a wide practice in the industry just the same way AI is being portrayed in a lot of Hollywood movies and television shows for years.
These sociological reinforcements with the use of technology could have a great impact on the way we perceive these personified software products. Parents who are afraid that kids are not being trained to behave in courteous way need not worry as Google in May released a feature called “pretty please” designed to teach kids and reward them for politeness when they engage the Assistant.
