Author: Lindsay Anne Balfour, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, University of British Columbia - Academia.edu

Abstracts:
- »In her unique and original chapter, Lindsay Balfour turns our attention to the popular digital assistants Siri and Alexa to discuss how their coding as both feminine and always-consenting refects larger attitudes toward gendered labor, sexual violence, and rape culture. These devices, which are programmed to be responsive to our every need except those of victims of sexual violence, demonstrate that technology, and artifcial intelligence, in particular, is anything but neutral, teaching users that they are entitled to women’s time, labor, and attention while teaching women how (not) to respond to threats and harassment.« (Source: Stephanie Patrick and Mythili Rajiva. »Introduction.« The Forgotten Victims of Sexual Violence in Film, Television and New Media: Turning to the Margins. Edited by Stephanie Patrick et al. Cham 2022: 17-18)

- »This chapter draws attention to the underexplored sexual and racialized violence of the digital domestic. Voice-activated assistants such as Siri and Alexa may not be coded as human, but they are coded as feminine, and their inclination toward gendered labor (particularly emotional and care labors) is not only a reflection of cultural attitudes toward gendered violence, but also actively teaching women how to respond to threat. These virtual assistants seem to fall prey to a fallacy that simply plugging in implies consent—they respond to our prompts, not the other way around. Given the problem of gender-based violence among our human populations, it is a crucial extension of intersectional feminist work on movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp to consider the gender-coded face of artificially intelligent virtual assistants as a critical intersection in discussions around domestic abuse, consent, and the acceptability of sexual violence in digital spaces.« (Source: SpringerLink)

Contents:

	9.1 Introduction: Gendered Violence and Digital Technology in Contemporary Screen Cultures (p. 163)
	9.2 Contexts: How Siri and Alexa Work (p. 165)
	9.3 Unpaid Labor, Surveillance Capitalism, and Consent (p. 168)
	9.4 Intimate Encounters, Violence, and Gendered Hosts (p. 172)
	9.5 Conclusion (p. 175)
	References (p. 176)

Wikipedia: Artificial intelligence: Virtual assistant / Amazon Alexa, Siri | Sex and the law: Sexual violence