Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa are all great examples of voice assistants who can virtually do almost anything apart from feeling emotions. From all the things you can customize them do, the most basic option for you is to choose the voice of your assistant — male or female. But for some reason, a couple of developers hated that and felt that people who don’t identify as either men or women, deserve their very own voice assistant. And just like that, Q was created.
It was developed by the agency VIRTUE, Copenhagen Pride and the organization Equal AI.
“We aim to get the attention of leading technological companies that work with AI to ensure they are aware that a gender binary normativity excludes many people and to inspire them by showing how easy it would actually be to recognize that more than two genders exist when developing artificial intelligence devices. This is about giving people choices and options,” Thomas Rasmussen, head of communication for Copenhagen Pride, said in a statement announcing Q, reported AndroidPIT.
The developers shared a video on YouTube introducing Q to the world. The video has gained over a 100,000 views, with 500 likes and 1.4 dislikes and comments have been disabled.
“Think of me like Siri or Alexa, but neither male or female,” Q says in the video.
“I am created for a future where we are no longer defined by gender, but rather how we define ourselves. My voice was recorded by people who neither identify as male nor female and then altered to sound gender neutral,” Q added.
Take a look at the introductory video below: