Every time I hear a "flirty" AI assistant voice, I feel a spike of revulsion. It's creepy. Seems obvious in retrospect, but I think I figured out why:
I'm very sensitive to manipulation. Not to say I always see it - I can, in fact, be quite gullible. But, when I *do* detect it, I take it as a deep personal insult and flag the source as never to be trusted again.
Apropos of that, a "flirty" AI assistant is not attempting to form a reciprocal social connection with me. A "flirty" AI assistant is manipulation.
A "flirty" AI assistant is an attempt at an emotional security exploit by a corporation in the hopes that I'll mistakenly grant the imperfect thing some empathy and give it a trusted place in my life. It feels very crass and dystopian.
Some folks describe this as a UI affordance to make users more comfortable with the machine. With me - and probably a lot of folks - it lands as sour as a door-to-door Comcast salesperson.
Ironically, the only assistant voices I tolerate tend to be very emotionally flat and matter-of-fact. Like, I know what you are, machine, and I'll trust you more if you stop pretending.
Les Orchard /
npub13c…a8dnd
2024-05-21 16:09:05
Author Public Key
npub13crqyhhc96kch4mzr5rpzl9fsj5wmwln23tgymevuz804jwd2dsqsa8dndPublished at
2024-05-21 16:09:05Event JSON
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