Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
There are talking machines in many science fiction films. Remember the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the real star of the mission is the talking computer HAL. He has no screen, just soft red light and a calm male voice.
In this regard, Stanley Kubrick was not quite right in his vision of the future. Computer voices do indeed surround us everywhere, but they are mostly female. When you call the bank, the machine voice is female, when you take a passport photo, a female voice guides you through the menu. And of course the voice of the voice assistants Siri and Alexa is female by default.
According to a survey by the industry association Bitkom, only ten percent of users of such devices prefer male voices. The female voices seem to be warmer, friendlier – apparently you’d rather be accompanied through life by a woman than by a man, right?
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