I, for one, go out of my way to regularly welcome our robot overlords on LinkedIn. Why? Because I learned all of my important life lessons from “The Simpsons.”
Just as Kent Brockman wisely pivoted and welcomed his new insect overlords, I, too, plan to roll out the red carpet for our future robot leaders. By hedging my bets, I figure I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So whenever I encounter a new robot with leadership potential, I become their new best friend. And, when I heard that OpenAI had released ChatGPT-4o, I was fully prepared to welcome their new chatbots with open arms.
Then I heard some of the voices: the eerily chirpy, overtly suggestive, saccharine sweet women’s voices used in 14 out of 15 (93%) of the chatbots showcased on the ChatGPT-4o release page. Check out the lead video at the top of the page and the video with a dog in it for glaring examples of the cloying tone.
Between the constant giggles, the annoyingly frequent vocal fry, the intermittent sibilant s’s, the hesitant “umms,” and the utter lack of reaction when interrupted or talked over, I was immediately disgusted. The tone and inflection of the chatbots reminded me of an insecure tween girl who had an inappropriate crush on her high school-aged math tutor.
Because erring on the side of caution is a life mantra for me, I feel obliged to muster a weak welcome for our new OpenAI chatbot overlords despite my overwhelming sense of nausea. But trust me — I’m not happy about it.
Those voices encompass all that I’ve worked so hard to unlearn in order to be taken seriously throughout my career as an attorney who also happens to be a woman.
That’s why I figured everyone else would be as offended by those voices as I was. After all, they seemed to be the stuff of immature schoolboy fantasies and not at all the way actual women interacted in settings outside of bars at closing time.
I was wrong. There’s a significant gender divide regarding the perception of OpenAI’s chatbot’s voices: most men thought the women’s voices seemed fine and even friendly, and most women felt like they were a whole lot of ick.
There’s a reason women feel that way. The breathy, giggly female-voiced chatbots came across as meek, submissive, deferring, compliant, and subservient, not simply friendly. If those descriptors are what men describe as “friendly,” then Houston, we’ve got a problem.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines friendly as “behaving in a pleasant, kind way toward someone.” Compliance or subservience are not found anywhere in that definition, and for good reason.
Friendly people are not submissive or obedient. Instead, the term “friendly” incorporates ideas of goodwill, generosity, and heartfelt kindness, traits embodied by the chatbots with male voices. Accordingly, it’s clear that the OpenAI developers understand the concept but chose to incorporate an additional level of submissiveness when programming the chatbots with feminine voices.
It’s no wonder women responded with a collective sense of ick. At the same time, most men seemed blind to the differences between the voices and focused on the impressiveness of the technology and the “friendliness” of the chatbots.
The disparity in reactions makes me wonder if OpenAI asked for input from women employees. Were they empowered to provide honest feedback if they were asked for their opinions? Development aside, did any women review the demo video and their content before publishing them online? Lastly, did anyone consider that more than half of potential consumers were women who might find the overall approach problematic?
As far as I’m concerned, OpenAI’s choices were bad business decisions at best and offensive and clueless at worst. As a professional woman who loves technology and invested in a ChatGPT Plus subscription within weeks of learning about the technology, I’m beginning to question OpenAI’s recent choices — and my own, for that matter.
I’m in the market for a cutting-edge generative AI tool, not a sexbot. If OpenAI is headed into sexbot territory, it needs to market its products appropriately. If it is designing a tool for the masses that will empower them to obtain the information they need when they need it, then it had best rechart its course since it is headed in the wrong direction and is effectively alienating more than half its consumer base.
I’m all about welcoming our robot overlords. But I draw the line at sexbots. OpenAI might be forging ahead with tech, but if they’re peddling “Her”-style fantasies instead of reality, they’ve seriously misunderstood their audience.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Director of Business and Community Relations at MyCase, web-based law practice management software. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at niki.black@mycase.com.
