Gender and racial bias issues in a commercial "tone of voice" analysis system.

ABSTRACT: Social Feedback Speech Technologies (SFST) are programs and devices, often "AI"-powered, that claim to provide users with feedback about how their speech sounds to other humans. To date, academic research has not focused on how such systems perform for a variety of speakers. In 2020, Amazon released a wearable called Halo, touting its fitness and sleep tracking, as well as its ability to evaluate the wearer's voice to help them "understand how they sound to others". The band presents its wearer with 'Positivity' and 'Energy' scores, as well as qualitative evaluations of the voice: adjectives such as 'confident', 'hesitant', 'calm', etc. This study evaluates how Halo performs for American English speakers of different races and genders. We recorded Black and white men and women reading thre

SUBMITTER: Holliday NR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11870350 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature