Startup creates first genderless voice assistant. Do you think it sounds genderless?
 

I've personally always liked male voice assistant voices. Not sure what to think about this one. sometimes it sounds unnatural when it goes into the higher and lower registers. What do you think?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/rese...ike-alexa.html

Last year, I wrote an opinion piece lamenting the number of female virtual assistants on the market.

I asked major tech companies — Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google, if we're naming names — for virtual assistants with traditionally male voices where they didn't exist and for a more neutral default setting where they did. I thought I was asking for choice, but a joint venture by Vice's creative agency Virtue and Copenhagen Pride has just shown me up and invented a third, undeniably compelling option.

The virtual assistant is called Q, and it's designed to be genderless. It sounds neither male nor female — or seems to fluctuate between the two depending on how intensely you're listening for a gendered bent.

Q is a composite of five voices, recorded and then altered to match a gender-neutral range of pitches, as defined by a linguist and researcher. It's scientific and definably gender-neutral, and it establishes criteria by which other assistants could follow suit.

Q checks a lot of the boxes that tech companies frequently call upon to justify their own gendered virtual assistants: warmth, helpfulness, a sense of authority. I can imagine Q reading out news headlines or a text from a relative. It even has a pleasantly ambiguous European accent.

Virtue and Copenhagen Pride have high ambitions to embed the virtual assistant in everything from personal tech to public transit.

"We aim to get the attention of leading technological companies that work with AI to ensure they are aware that a gender binary normativity excludes many people and to inspire them by showing how easy it would actually be to recognize that more than two genders exist when developing artificial intelligence devices. This is about giving people choices and options," Thomas Rasmussen, head of communication for Copenhagen Pride said in a statement announcing Q.

The only hitch: Q is just a voice at this point. There's no AI framework underpinning the assistant, which means Q can't actually understand and address your requests yet.

Meanwhile Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant can't seem to break out of the female-first image they were made in. Q could help with that.

that's klause! the gay ski instructor from sweeden! he has a cable show :1orglaugh also there is no such thing! you are one or the other

So this is for mentally ill people that can't handle the reality that you're either born female or male?

Indeed .

This is stupid. Not the voice, but the purpose.

Very interesting. Surely sounds transgendered. I hear both male and female.

It's kind of creepy.

Check your privilege bigot

I agree...

Basic neuroscience... your brain will assume and assign gender to the voice no matter what.

i like Q...

Sounds like a normal gay guy to me. BW should have spotted it straight off. LOL

sounds like a faggot...product fail...

Sounds like an imported English tranny.

Yeah we really need gender neutral mentally disturbed voices in our heads..

Fuck off.

As a straight male who was born with a penis and shit, I feel excluded by this faggoty AI and I want a rugged mans voice AI that swears and is racist and homophobic and chews tobacco and spits and farts and burps...

You love pushing your antiquated stereotypes. Normal Gay guys sound normal & look normal like me. You don't know we're Gay unless we tell you. The only thing that's different about us has where we put our dicks.

Gay guys on the female side of the spectrum are closer to transexuals & transgender. Those are the feminine "Gay guys" you fantasize about. The guys that sound & walk girly, pluck their eyebrows, think they have to have perfect hair and Friends & fit in the perfect clique, etc. etc.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Listen to all these butch guys. :1orglaugh

That's just creepy and unnecessary.

This aspect of the way society is heading is kind of troubling to me. There are men and women. Two fucking sexes. It's ok for a voice to be either male or female. This shit needs to stop.

:1orglaugh :2 cents: . . .

haha I've seen you say shit like this on about dozen different subjects that the left prides itself on. You side with Trump supporters on TONS of shit - This is why you're so bitter and angry all the time!

sounds gay as fuck

Healthcare for all = not stupid

Equal rights for gays and trans =not stupid.

Clean environment = not stupid.

Denying there are only two sexes = stupid as fuck.

You proved me right

You picked out extreme feminine Gay stereotypes and presented them as the typical Gay guy. You did the exact same thing with black people and Muslims.

This is how Paul Markham rolls.

Paul Markham incapable of having an honest discussion with people you're dead set on pushing your negative stereotypes about muslims, brown people & Gays.

Have you looked in the mirror and applied the failed bitter old man stereotype to yourself? It fits

This is your typical Gay guy. You don't know we're gay unless we tell you.

Mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg

You're such a liar. I have never discriminated against anyone based on the colour of their skin. I have discriminated against people based on their culture.

Pete Buttigieg doesn't sound gay and I didn't say all gay people talk in a feminine way. I didn't say all gay people sound feminine. In fact it's only you who are saying that. Did I hit a nerve?

At the end of the day, this is very basic neuroscience. Your brain is looking for patterns, looking for easy to identify information, easy to categorize, easy to store and easy to recall/retrieve etc.

Creating something the brain can't readily recognize as it is something that doesn't exist, is retarded as it just causes the brain to stumble and then you start thinking "what's wrong with this voice" instead of "i need to pay attention to what the voice is saying".

You just posted videos of effeminate Gay men and said "Listen to all these butch guys. :1orglaugh" Butch is a derogatory term describing masculine females, not normal Gay men.

There's is one woman of color in all of your content store of thousands of women :evil-laug

It's almost like you forget on a daily basis everything you've been called out for on here and you think you're starting a new each day.

listen I have friends from all walks of life I know racists, I grew up with them, I know murderers, I know crooks, I know all sorts of people. I take people on an individual basis. I don't care that you're a racist or a xenophobe or that you make fun of Gay people none of that matters to me. I'm just pointing out who you are, and you don't like that, and that's ok. Denial is a force to be reckoned with.

In the other thread today you were telling a guy looking for escorts to pretend he was a pornographer to get sex. Something that many people have been thrown in jail for here and got prison sentences for.

Your total lack of regard for the information you put out there and what the consequences could be is astounding, that's not the Paul Markham I used to know. And that's okay I'm just pointing it out.

People change life goes on all's good.

Sounds like a tranny.

Sounds to me like a camp gay male. And it sounds unsettling.

Thank you for your honesty :thumbsup

I agree 100%

I thought those people were saying there's more than two genders, not more than two sexes? Gender identity is how you see yourself not how you physically are. Think of it as your sex is you naked, and your gender expression is how you express yourself to others, like your clothes.

You and I are men that identify as men.

Then there's a man that that identifies as Gender Fluid, which means he feels he's an even mix of boy and girl and sometimes he feels more feminine and then other days he feels more masculine. His sexuality could be straight, Bi, Gay. etc.

Your gender does not define your sexuality.

I'm still learning about this it is complicated, for me anyway.

There are no coloured girls in the Czech Republic and I will shoot the best to sell at the highest prices not to appear PC. How many non-gay scenes have you got?

I judge people on skills and value, not on colour. Are you one of those who look at colour first? I liked Obama because of his policies, then I fell away from him because of his achievements. At no time did his colour make any difference.

Your total lack of understanding shows how stupid you are. How many threads did you start today with the Words Trump supporter based on nothing but your opinion and not facts? Another sign of your stupidity.

The moment one pays a porn model to shoot a scene one is a pornographer.

If a country allows in too many low skilled, unskilled and non-working people it will cost the rest huge amount of money. Sadly businesses love the situation, it drives down wages, created a huge pool of unemployed who will do any job for any money.

And at the same time it drives up welfare payments at a time when tax revenues are unable to keep pace. Study the amount needed every year to pay for your cheap labour. https://www.google.com/search?q=2017...gujh V2MjvSM:

Tell me that's not right.

Careful or BW will be after you.

Skills identity is how you and other people see you not what colour you physically are.

Why can't you get it?

My post was about gender. No mention of "skills" or a person's color. You ok Paul?

So many years of you filming , decades, and no people of color, despite you living in the UK where there are plenty.

Yes well that says it all. In 50 years of you shooting content no minorities. You don't consider people of color quality and you immigrated to an all-white country. Got it :thumbsup

I'm not calling you a racist Paul.