Does AI have a gender?

It? They? She? He?

No, AI doesn’t have a gender. But, the interactions between humans and AI can be gendered, which is where this gets interesting.

Many corporations have chosen a “female” avatar for their AI. Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Erica from Bank of America come to mind. (I dislike this “female AI” trend, by the way—stay tuned for why.) Google is a notable exception to this trend (its AI is called simply Google Assistant, or “hey google”).

Name and gender for an AI is similar to how you would name a pet—the AI obviously doesn’t have the emotions to care. But other humans buy into the way you are personifying your AI tool. You are applying human perceptions and stereotypes to that AI, anthropomorphizing it.

Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash

Making your AI that is designed to serve you “female” is a cringy red flag. This brings up stereotypes of Mad Men and secretaries from the 80’s. It’s impossible to me to link the idea of being respectful towards a woman who obviously has her own agency with the idea of a non-sentient AI that is built to compute things for people.

And if you think no one takes it seriously what gender an AI is, consider that BMW recalled its GPS system in Germany to replace the “female” voice with a “male” voice, after a large volume of customer complaints. Men did not want to take directions from a “female” sounding voice, apparently. Yes, this is actually true (although that article has a lot of sexism about voices, beware).

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Interestingly, at least in the US, most GPS voices I’ve heard have sounded more “female.” Just goes to show that these cultural rules are extremely arbitrary.

Wouldn’t we all be much happier if we just listened to the words the voice says instead of all this unnecessary gender and tone? I’m wincing as I write all these “female” and “male” here, as it seems necessary to describe this phenomenon, but I wish I knew a less gendered way to talk about voices.

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

How do we talk about AI and robots in the third person? I personally default to “it” for AI and robots. Some examples:

I refer to Google Home as “it.” “I told Google to turn off the lights but it isn’t listening to me again!”

I refer to ChatGPT as “it.” “I asked ChatGPT how to clean my bathroom and it wrote me a list of steps.”

In Becky Chambers’ (lovely, highly recommended) Monk and Robot series (Amazon affiliate link), the robot uses “it” pronouns because it doesn’t have a gender. It is clearly sentient and has a personality in its own right, and has chosen the pronoun “it” for itself and based on its culture of other robots.

What about singular “they” for AI and robots? Sure, I’m in favor of this, if you are creating a personified character and they/them pronouns seem correct. Respectfully using they/them pronouns could help raise awareness and help normalize using they/them for a single person.

Photo by FRANCESCO TOMMASINI on Unsplash

This article on AI wouldn’t be complete without asking ChatGPT to weigh in, so here is what it said:

Rey: Do you have a gender?

ChatGPT: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have a gender. I am a machine learning model created by OpenAI, and I lack a physical form or personal identity.

Rey: How should I refer to you in the third person?

ChatGPT: You can refer to me using third-person pronouns such as "it" or "the AI." Since I don't have personal identity or gender, those pronouns are commonly used when talking about AI models like myself. However, it's important to note that some individuals prefer to anthropomorphize AI systems and may use gendered pronouns like "he" or "she" even though it is not technically applicable.

That would make a great t-shirt: “gendered pronouns not technically applicable” :)

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Take care,

Rey