Siri gains a new gender-neutral voice option in latest iOS update

Apple has developed a new Siri voice, now available in the beta versions of its iOS 15.4 software, that doesn’t sound obviously male or female. The decision to introduce a gender-neutral voice is one that sees the tech giant taking yet another step away from the criticism that, historically, digital assistants have reinforced unfair gender stereotypes.

Over the years, industry observers and experts argued how the creation of voice assistants with female-sounding names — like Alexa, Siri and Cortana — which also speak with female-sounding voices, implied that women should be the ones to do your bidding at any time and even take your abuse. A U.N. study additionally called out the female voiced-assistants and their submissive and sometimes even flirty and coy styles.

More problematically, the decision to make so many of the virtual assistants female by default was likely driven by a lack of diversity in the teams responsible for building our everyday technology. That issue doesn’t just lead to thoughtless choices with A.I. voices, it has also delayed the advance of useful tools for women. For example, it took years for Apple to realize that its Health app should probably include a period-tracking feature, considering it’s a health measure relevant to roughly half the human population.

Apple, to its credit, did address concerns with the Siri voice last year when it issued an update that added more diverse voices and, notably, also made it so Siri’s voice would no longer default to being female.

But what if you didn’t have to think about the gender of your A.I. voice assistant at all?

That’s clearly the intention here with the addition of the new and now fifth Siri voice, though Apple hasn’t yet explicitly said that’s the case.

However, the iOS software’s code provides some hints towards Apple’s thinking.

Developer Steve Mosser found a reference to a gender-neutral Siri voice in earlier versions of the iOS 15.4 beta, and this week he noted the fifth American Siri voice was added to Beta 4 with the filename of “Quinn.”