Gendered Artificial Intelligence in Libraries: Opportunities to Deconstruct Sexism and Gender Binarism

Abstract

Historically, the majority of digital assistants, including chatbots, have been assigned names, voices, visual representations, and even “personalities” that are stereotypically feminine and reflect patriarchal ideology. This cross-sectional descriptive study of chatbots associated with large academic libraries in the United States found that there are few extant library chatbots, and in a major departure from trends, there are even fewer that are gendered. This is promising, in that it signals—whether intentionally or not—that the practices of creators and adopters are countering entrenched tendencies to typecast digital assistants as women, which may signal more feminist and gender-inclusive technology design to come.