爲什麼智能手機的語音助手都是女聲?

If you have a smartphone, you also have your very own digital personal assistant. There's the iPhone's Siri (now added to Apple TV), of course, but don't forget Cortana on the Windows Phone or the S Voice on the Samsung Galaxy. All of these virtual voices have one thing in common: They all sound female.

倘若你有一部智能手機，那你一定也會有自己的私人專屬數碼助手。蘋果手機上裝有Siri語音助手（現今蘋果電視上也裝有此功能），當然，類似的語音功能軟件還有微軟手機上的“Cortana”（微軟小娜）以及三星“蓋樂世”系列手機上的S Voice語音助手功能。但所有的這些虛擬語音功能都有一個共同的特點：均爲女性發音。

This, as you might've guessed, is no coincidence. Writing for Wired this week, Jessi Hempel explores some of the social-science research on the way people perceive male voices versus female voices. Take, for example, research conducted by Karl MacDorman, an Indiana University professor who studies human-computer interaction:

你可能已經猜到，這些巧合並非偶然。傑西·亨普爾本週在美國《連線》雜誌發表了一篇文章，文章寫到他對一些社會科學方面的研究進行了調研，比如人們對男性和女性聲音的感知方式差異。舉個例子，印第安納大學的一位主要研究人機交互的教授卡爾·麥克道曼曾經進行過這樣一個研究：

He and fellow researchers played clips of male and female voices to people of both genders, then asked them to identify which they preferred. The researchers also measured the way participants actually responded to the voices. In a 2011 paper, they reported that both women and men said female voices came across as warmer. In practice, women even showed a subconscious preference for responding to females; men remained subconsciously neutral. “Men will say they prefer female speech, and women really do prefer it,” MacDorman says.

他和和其他研究人員給參與男女兩性聲音測試的志願者分別播放了男性聲音和女性聲音的片段，然後讓這些志願者聽完之後確定並選出所喜歡的聲音。與此同時，研究人員還對志願者實對聲音的反饋進行了測量。他們曾經在 2011 年的一篇文章中指出，女性和男性志願者都認爲女性的聲音聽起來比較溫暖人心。實驗證明，女性志願者對女性的聲音表現出了一種潛意識上的喜好，而男性志願者則仍潛意識地保持中立。卡爾·麥克道曼教授表示：“男性志願者總是說他們喜歡女性的聲音，但女性志願者纔是真心實意地喜歡女性的聲音。

Then again, you can't entirely discount the fact that the Silicon Valley tech-bros who are designing many of these virtual assistants may be falling back on the “stereotype of a compliant sidekick,” Hempel concedes. But then again, it will be interesting to watch how these voices evolve alongside the technology. After all, for their app, Domino's went with an affable-sounding dude-voice, which they dubbed Dom.

當然，傑西·亨普爾在文中還提到：我們不能完全否認這樣一個事實，即許多來自硅谷的虛擬助手設計師們可能正在陷入“一個兼容的助手”這樣一個刻板印象上。不過，能夠見證語音技術如何伴隨科技不斷演變進步，也是件十分有趣的事。畢竟，多米諾(Domino)就在他們的 App 中使用了一名暖男的聲音，他們將它命名爲 Dom。