Female Computer Voices
 

"One answer may lie in biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women's voices more pleasing than men's. 'It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes,' said Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of 'The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships. 'It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices.'

One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company gave Siri a female voice in the U.S. Nor would she say why Siri speaks like a man in the UK, where iPhone 4S owners have swarmed online forums to request a female voice instead."

Just heard this story yesterday:
It's A Girl! The New iPhone Speaks : NPR

An elevator at the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital, is female, she announces the floor then the direction......................3, going down.............yeah I like that elevator.

My iPhone has become

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The voice for my GPS is female but it is not really a computer voice. It is a human that spent a lot of time in a recording studio.

I call her bichen Betty.

I put my GPS on a french female. I have no idea where I'm going but get a chubby driving & don't care.

Reminds me of the movie Andromeda Strain from the 70's, where Dr. Hall thinks the automated voice is sexy and is told:

"The voice belongs to Miss Gladys Stevens who is 63 years old. She lives in Omaha and makes her living taping messages for voice-reminder systems."

That's funny - I've had a couple of Garmins. Several were real entry level models. One was a "refurb" unit that I bought at a truck stop while on travel. The voice on that one was SERIOUSLY messed up. Sounded like an 80 year old lady with way too much booze and cigarettes in her history.

We dubbed her "Black Lung Betty."

angela

from what I have seen of German women it is no wonder that German men would like one area of their lives they don't have to take orders from...

:D A friend calls his the same thing!
Won't leave home without her, ah, er...it.

Les

A buddy of mine bought a brand new Datsun 280Zx. It had a female voice to say "your door is ajar" and a few other things. His wife was was so jealous he had to take it to the dealer to have a man's voice replace the female voice.

He still has that car. Under 20,000 miles and looks like it rolled off the dealer lot last week.

I have downloaded a female voice with a French accent (not the language itself) for my GPS - that is so awesome!

Thanks for the morning laugh!

Our elevator here at work has a female voice. I tried setting my GPS to a female voice but found the male voice more understandable.

GPS has since been absconded by wife and step daughter... good riddance... I hate the thing!

I did the female Aussie accent download. Always a happy ending when I use my GPS!

funny thing is the female voice on my GPS still gets lost all the time.

These days how does one tell if a voice is male or female? Wouldn't that be profiling?