Most AI assistants are feminine – and it’s fuelling dangerous stereotypes and abuse
Most AI assistants are feminine – and it’s fuelling dangerous stereotypes and abuse
Publish Date: 2026-01-26 13:54:00
Source Domain: theconversation.com
In 2024, artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistants worldwide surpassed 8 billion, more than one per person on the planet. These assistants are helpful, polite – and almost always default to female.
Their names also carry gendered connotations. For example, Apple’s Siri – a Scandinavian feminine name – means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory”.
Meanwhile, when IBM’s Watson for Oncology launched in 2015 to help doctors process medical data, it was given a male voice. The message is clear: women serve and men instruct.
This is not harmless branding – it’s a design choice that reinforces existing stereotypes about the roles women and men play in society.
Nor is this merely symbolic. These choices have real-world consequences, normalising gendered subordination and risking abuse.
The dark side of ‘friendly’ AI
Recent research reveals the extent of harmful interactions with feminised AI.
A 2025 study found up to 50% of human–machine exchanges were verbally abusive.
Another study from 2020 placed the figure between 10% and 44%, with conversations often containing sexually explicit language.
Yet the sector is not engaging in systemic change, with many developers today still reverting to pre-coded responses to verbal abuse. For example, “Hmm, I’m not sure what you meant by that question”.
These patterns raise real concerns that such behaviour could spill over into social relationships.
Gender sits at the heart of the problem.
One 2023 experiment showed 18% of user interactions with a female-embodied agent focused on sex, compared to 10% for a male embodiment and just 2% for a non-gendered robot.
These figures may underestimate the problem, given the difficulty of detecting suggestive speech. In some cases, the numbers are staggering. Brazil’s Bradesco bank reported that its feminised chatbot received 95,000 sexually harassing messages in a single year.
Even more disturbing is how quickly abuse…
