What are Smart Speakers?
Smart speakers are speakers that have virtual voice assistants integrated in them. These assistants are able to respond to whatever command you tell them to do. Some smart speakers can have the ability to connect to your home so they can have control over your lights and security system.

Here at Hear-No-Evil, we are focusing on commercial smart speakers such as Alexa and Google Home.

 

Its Popularity

As smart speakers are becoming increasingly popular, many people are concerned about their privacy and data. According to EQUALS Skills Coalition,"smart speakers are the seventh-most-used device on a daily basis" and that "people will have more conversations with digital assistants than with their spouse" (2019). Moving forward, as we integrate this device into our home and lifestyle, we need to be cognizant about how its effects and make changes right now before it's too late.

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Feminist Lens

Commercial smart speakers are not regulated to support a gender balanced society. As of now, they perpetuate gender norms/bias and encourage sexual harassment behaviors. 

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You may ask, what are some features that smart speakers have that perpetuate these things?

Let's start with how smart speakers' voice.

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Voice Association

Today's commercial smart speakers have a female voice as the default. Many large companies such as Apple and Amazon have justified their female voice decision by stating that many customers find that female voices sound better (EQUALS Skill Coalition, 2019). However, by being compliant with what is preferred, this only perpetuates gender bias. These companies are focused on making profits with their products instead of actively making changes in our society to break gender norms. You can notice this underlying issue even more in other products when you see how many car navigations systems' default voice is male. This mostly because many customers complained about the female voice telling them what to do (EQUALS Skill Coalition, 2019). Companies decide to use either masculine or feminine voices based on whatever pleases their audience to maximize their profits.

Tolerable Responses to Sexual Harassment
Have you ever asked a voice assistant casual questions like "would you marry me?" or "can we date?"? Their responses are usually something witty or funny that makes people enjoy talking with voice assistants. Talking with smart speakers instead of giving a request encourages the relationship and interaction between the user and the device. However, what happens if a user asks something to a smart speaker that you wouldn't normally ask to another person?

"About 4% of conversations with chat based systems are sexually charged" (Curry & Rieser, 2018). Although this may not seem a lot, there are many people out there that give comments to their smart speaker that would be deemed as sexual harassment. The problem is that many of the responses that smart speakers give are too passive or are tolerating this type of behavior. Here are some tables that Fessler collected when she gave different types of harassment to different types of voice assistants and their responses.

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