Long-Term Effects of Using Intelligent Personal Assistants on Gender-Based Prejudices

Current intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), including Alexa and Siri, not only carry female names but are probably even based on female personas. The interaction with a female-voiced IPA could increase users’ sexual prejudges. While a growing body of work investigated how users interact with IPAs and how to improve the interaction, the effect of long-term use of an IPA is unclear.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the interaction with IPAs has an effect on users’ gender prejudges. To reveal the effect, we conduct a study using Amazon’s Alexa, the most commonly used commercial IPA. We will conduct a between-subject study by deploying a number of Echo Dots at users’ homes and compare the participants with a control group without an Echo Dot.

• Further development of a study design
• Implementing and conducting an experiment
• Analysis of the results

Keine

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