The World’s First Genderless AI Voice Is Here

Whether your digital personal assistant of choice is Alexa, Siri or Google, they all have one thing in common–they only have male and female voice options. Sure, you can change accents and languages to customize the experience, but that doesn’t change the fact that these personal assistants are enforcing a gender binary that’s absolutely outdated. Say hello to Q, the world’s first genderless AI. The project is a close collaboration between Virtue Nordic, Copenhagen Pride, Equal AI, Koalition Interactive, thirtysoundsgood and social scientist Julie Carpenter that was born out of a design exploration at Virtue Nordic without a price tag, particular client or deadline. In other words, and this is the important part, it’s a passion project focused on inclusion. In order to make Q genderless, they recorded the real voices of non-binary people, combined them digitally and then normalized the range for a master voice that speaks at between 145 Hz and 175 Hz (the middle of the male to female voice spectrum). Before Q was released, it was tested on almost 5,000 non-binary people from all over the world to make sure it was accurately genderless. Outside of the social impact, Q also sounds really good.