Meet Q, the first genderless digital voice assistant.

The linguists, technologists, and sound designers behind Q hope to pressure the tech industry into acknowledging that gender isn’t necessarily binary, a matter of man or woman, masculine or feminine. 1/

When setting up a digital voice assistant, you’re likely to find two gender options: male or female. The problem is, that binary choice isn’t an accurate representation of the complexities of gender. That's where Q comes in. 2/

It’s no accident that Siri and Cortana and Alexa all have female voices—research shows that users react more positively to them than they would to a male voice. And the designers behind these choices risk further reinforcing gender stereotypes. 3/

Sound designer Nis Nørgaard zeroed in on one person’s voice, which registered somewhere between what we’d consider masculine or feminine. There’s a sweet spot between 145 and 175 hertz, a range that research shows we perceive as more gender-neutral. 4/

To be fair, tech companies aren’t necessarily excluding voices that fall outside the gender binary on purpose. But there's no better time to push those norms, especially as the voice assistant market is projected to grow by 35 percent each year until at least 2023. 5/

Whether tech companies embrace the idea is to be seen. But the beauty of AI and robotics is that they’ve prompted honest conversations about biases and stereotypes. Read more here: 6/

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