I know smarter people have already pointed this out but...

[korafox]

...lately I've been struck by the fact that every. single. personal assistant AI that I see commercials for has been given a female voice.  How useful they are!  How willing to fetch information and count things and remind you of appointments!

It's easy to not actively notice these things until you see those commercials airing right alongside the ones for the IBM Watson AI, which does have a male voice.  Because of course it does, being a hyper-intelligent supercomputer that is Redefining Industry and Blazing A Trail To The Future!

I'm sure it was a sound business decision on IBM's part.   After all, if you gave the Watson a female voice and had it snark at Ken Jennings on broadcast television, someone would track down the address of the server room and dox it. 

Comments

[thefeifei]

Good observation! Tony Stark has Jarvis, who I also think is on the "hyper-intelligent supercomputer" end of the personal assistant spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, Leslie Knope has the totally not-helpful Tom Haverford.

I'm sad I can't think of a single male or male-voiced personal assistant that is just a friendly, helpful, fetcher-of-things. :(

[korafox]

Oh my gods, Tom would make the worst helper AI. Your device would suddenly be completely full of celebrity photos and all your documents would somehow be covered in digital glitter.