Fjord Voice UI Guide

The progression of natural language processing, deep learning algorithms and significantly improved microphones means we are beginning to see interfaces that can understand and accommodate the rigid structure of human conversation. Companies are developing personalities for their virtual assistants, which have mostly arrived as a set of female characters – embodied in phones, home assistants and navigation systems – personifying AI via voice. However, it's important to note that applying this gendered identity has ramifications, especially because the resulting impulse is to then add a "her" to every product we can. Instead, we should pay attention to the unexamined decisions we're making to avoid digitizing existing power structures under the guise of a "default" identity.