People change their voice when talking to apps like Alexa and Siri

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

People change their voice when talking to apps like Alexa and Siri, according to new research.

When we talk to them we are louder, flatter and slower than if we were talking to a real person.

The finding could improve their ability to understand human speech and determine how talking with technology impacts language.

Lead author Dr. Georgia Zellou , of the University of California, Davis, said: "We do see some differences in patterns across human- and machine-directed speech.

"People are louder and slower when talking to technology. These adjustments are similar to the changes speakers make when talking in background noise, such as in a crowded restaurant.

"People also have expectations that the systems will misunderstand them and that they won’t be able to understand the output.”

In experiments the US team examined how people adjust their voice when communicating with an AI system compared to talking with another human.

They found the participants produced louder and slower speech with less pitch variation when they spoke to voice-AI such as Siri or Alexa - even across identical interactions.

On the listening side, the researchers showed that how humanlike a device sounds impacts how well listeners will understand it.

If a listener thinks the voice talking is a device, they are less able to accurately understand.

However, if it sounds more humanlike, their comprehension increases.

Clear speech, like in the style of a newscaster, was better understood overall, even if it was machine-generated.

Clarifying what makes a speaker intelligible will be useful for voice technology.

For example, these results suggest that text-to-speech voices should adopt a 'clear' style in noisy conditions.

The researchers aims to apply them to people from different age groups and social and language backgrounds.

They also want to investigate how people learn language from devices and how linguistic behavior adapts as technology changes.

Co author Dr. Michell Cohn said: "There are so many open questions.

"For example, could voice-AI be a source of language change among some speakers?

"As technology advances, such as with large language models like ChatGPT, the boundary between human and machine is changing – how will our language change with it?”

The study was presented at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Chicago.