Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home are becoming increasingly common in UK households, with 11% of Brits claiming to own one.
These devices enable users to play music, check the news or weather, and control other smart devices in their homes using voice commands.
But new research has revealed that women often struggle to be understood by their smart speakers.
In a survey of 1,000 smart speaker owners by YouGov, two thirds of female owners (67%) said their device fails to respond to a voice command at least "sometimes", compared to 54% of men.
By contrast, 46% of men say their device "rarely" or "never" fails to work, compared to only 32% of women.
This "sexist" behaviour comes down to how AI voice assistants are trained, according to Delip Rao , founder and CEO of R7 Speech Sciences, which focuses on AI in speech.
In order for AI assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri to understand commands, they have to be trained using a wide range of voice recordings.
If these recordings are predominantly male voices, which tend to be lower in pitch, then the voice assistants will struggle to understand higher-pitched female voices.
Source: Read Full Article