`Alexa, who are you?´ – Analysing Alexa’s, Cortana’s and Siri’s Vocal Personality

Authors: Anabell Hacker

Abstract:

The paper answers the research question of whether listeners assign a personality to synthetic voices by using the example of Alexa by Amazon, Cortana by Microsoft and Siri by Apple. Moreover, the voices were assessed regarding their attractiveness. A perception experiment was conducted with 37 participants (28 female, nine male). Listeners were asked to rate the voice recordings using the 30-item short version of the NEO-FFI personality test and additionally on a seven-point attractiveness scale. The participants were able to assign personality to the synthetic voices. In the dimension of Extraversion, Siri showed the highest values, followed by Alexa. Alexa was deemed the most conscientious, with Siri and Cortana after that. Cortana had the highest Neuroticism values, followed by Siri and then Alexa. Siri was rated the most open to experience while Cortana received the lowest scores. Siri was also perceived as the most agreeable, Cortana had lower values in this dimension with Alexa in between. Siri and Alexa were rated significantly more attractive than Cortana. Lastly, an acoustic analysis of the recordings showed parallels to observations from research on the subject of voice and personality.