People + Technology + Culture
Q for Pride (prod. Emil Asmussen)
Voice technologies are increasingly incorporated into everyday lives, from cars to voice home assistants. Thus, people using voice assistance in their daily lives are a diverse group, including men, women, and people whose gender identities go beyond binary categories of man or woman. However, in 2019 there had been minimal effort to create voice assistants that reflect and include a range of gender identities. Further, voice assistants Siri, Alexa, and Google Home all defaulted to feminized voices, although Google Home and Siri could be changed by users to a male voice.
The interdisciplinary team from Virtue-Worldwide/VICE-Nordic, Copenhagen Pride, EqualAI, Koaltion Interactive,ThirtySoundsGood, the University of Copenhagen, and myself developed Project Q, the world’s first gender-ambiguous voice for use with technology.
Throughout the project, my role was to act as human-technology interaction advisor to the team, communicating relevant academic research to its cross-functional members, explaining ethical implications for choices made in Q's development, and suggesting strategies for an empathetic and human-centered development process.
As Project Q's science communicator to the public, I was responsible for sharing the project's complex socio-cultural concepts to media, museums, academia, and Cannes jurors, ensuring that nuanced ideas were accurately explained to a broad, international audience. To accomplish this, I used storytelling techniques to make the intricate concepts accessible and compelling to diverse audiences. Along the way, I identified the project goals for Q, which were, in part, to: 1) contribute positively to the ongoing global discussion about gender, identity, and technology, 2) show that developing a human-based voice as a gender-ambiguous voice option was possible, and 3) demonstrate the significance of gender inclusivity and representation in speech research and technology design.
To develop Q, the audio workgroup from ThirtySoundsGood first recorded the voices of six people who identified as male, female, transgender, or nonbinary to authentically blend a voice that did not typically fit within the male-female binary. To find this voice, engineers worked on the pitch, tone, and the format filter to blend them to a gender ambiguous-sounding single voice. Via Copenhagen Pride, the team surveyed more than 4,600 people between the ages of 25-40 across Denmark, the UK, and Venezuela who defined themselves as nonbinary. These people were asked to rate versions of the human voices that had been woven into a single voice. However, at the end of several sound-engineered iterations and accompanying user feedback, survey respondents reported preferring a modulated single human voice that fit within a frequency range that was perceived as most gender-neutral (145-175 Hz). In short, half of respondents said they could not tell the gender of Q, while the other half were evenly split between thinking that Q sounded male or female.
Q was included in the UNESCO think piece I'd blush if I could: Closing gender divides in digital skills through education. Additionally, media outlets around the world covered the siginificance of Q, including The New York Times, Wired, and NPR. Additionally, Virtue and VICE ensured that the final Hz information and all files for Q were made available to everyone without cost.
There is no "normal", or standardized default type of voice. Although societies and cultures may have expectations of what a normal voice sounds like, those interpretations are built on societal power structures where normal is often cultural code for "mainstream acceptance ".
– J. Carpenter
As research consultant partnered with VIRTUE-Worldwide, VICE-Copenhagen, Copenhagen Pride, and EqualAI for Project Q (2019).
"Q, the Genderless Voice, is the official narrator of the new Designs for Different Futures exhibit. The exhibit explores the challenges and opportunities that humans may face in the years and centuries ahead, while raising many questions about what technologies may hold for intimacy, identity, and citizenship."
(October 22–March 8, 2019).
Carpenter, J. (November, 2019). Flipping the script: Q and nonbinary voice. "Why is AI a woman?": Design for Different Futures. [Panel]. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia, PA.
"“I think it's really important to have representation for trans people when it comes to not only AI, but voices in general. It's a new thing in the last three to five years, that trans people are actually represented in popular culture."
Introducing Q. (VIRTUE).
The World's First Genderless Voice Assistant. (VICE TV).