Digital assistants like Siri and Alexa entrench gender biases, says UN

Female-voiced tech often gives submissive responses to queries, Unesco report finds

Assigning female genders to digital assistants such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa is helping entrench harmful gender biases, according to a UN agency.

Research released by Unesco claims that the often submissive and flirty responses offered by the systems to many queries - including outright abusive ones - reinforce ideas of women as subservient.