Unseen Hands: On the Gendered Design of Virtual Assistants and the Limits of Creative AI

Unlike other forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning that are used for creative production, female-presenting virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Assistant are not designed to be collaborators nor content producers, but rather, to serve as mouthpieces and platforms for others' pre-designated scripts to be performed. This talk examines the gendered design and creative limitations of AI virtual assistants as part of a growing body of studies in the systemic biases of technological design