I tried to sexually harass Siri, but all she did was give me a polite brush-off | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Virtual assistants are millennial Stepford Wives. But perhaps there’s an upside for real women
“Hey Siri, show me your tits,” is not something I ever thought I’d say, especially not while sitting in an empty kitchen while wearing fluffy slippers. I have many hobbies, but sexually harassing disembodied digital entities is not one of them, even in the interests of journalistic research.
But having read that a UN report that claimed virtual assistants coded female by default (i.e. most of them) were reinforcing gender stereotypes that portray women as subservient – for example, by responding to sexual harassment in a tolerant, even coquettish, manner – I thought I had better conduct an experiment. “Hey Siri, wanna fuck?” I was trying to do my best frat boy impression, but ended up sounding sad and apologetic, a bit like how I wish men would in real life. “Hey Siri,” I said, lugubriously, “you’re a slut.”