Feminist chatbot F'xa to teach you about AI gender bias
If you have ever come across an AI voice assistant, you probably would have tried cussing at it. However, there's a tonal commonality in how every popular AI- Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Google Home- responds to such crude language; with servitude. The other thing that's common? They are all default female voices. Hence, a non-profit deemed it imperative to create a feminist voice assistant.
Current AIs continue to portray women as docile
As many argue that such AIs normalize sexual harassment, The Feminist Internet, a non-profit that aims to advance internet equalities for women, has created F'xa. Reportedly, F'xa teaches users about the discriminatory side of AI and how they further harmful stereotypes attached to women. A woman's voice responding to verbal sexual harassment in this manner reinforces the idea that women are docile.
UNESCO conducted research on AI's response to verbal harassment
A recent UNESCO report, titled 'I'd blush if I could,' noted how AIs respond to verbal sexual harassment. While Siri's responses were viewed as "obliging and eager to please." When told "You are a slut," the AI responds, "I'd blush if I could." Google Assistant notably had a "deflecting, lackluster, or apologetic response," responding to the same remark with, "My apologies, I don't understand."
How does the feminist voice assistant F'xa work?
Reportedly, F'xa was created keeping feminist values in mind with a diverse team at Feminist Internet, that used the non-profit's Personal Intelligent Assistant Standards and Josie Young's Feminist Chatbot Design research. Young's research compiles a series of reflective questions, ethical AI principles, incorporates a feminist design and research on de-biasing. The bot ensures that a designer's gender prejudices don't seep into their chatbots.
Here's a quick example of how F'xa educates users
When F'xa is asked "How does bias creep into AI systems?" it replied: "Bias occurs in AI systems when they reflect human biases held by the people involved in coding, collecting, selecting, or using data to train the algorithms that power the AI."
Anyone can access F'xa via their smartphone
You can interact with F'xa on the internet, via your smartphone f-xa.co, and can be used by anybody. The chatbot helps you understand topics of data privacy, some deeper issues with existing AI, and how we could move forward. Overall, Feminist Internet wishes to eradicate toxic online abuse and introduce an equal internet with algorithmic accountability. F'xa is only the beginning.
