Robots are here to stay. But what accents should they have?

In June 2022, a potpourri of emotions fueled an ongoing Twitter storm. Realbotix, a Californian AI company specialising in the creation of human-like robots, had just presented a brand new, 'world's first sex robot'. The lifeless blonde bombshell managed to have many eyebrows raised not much for her identity, but for a striking feature: her Glaswegian accent.

Confronted by the Daily Record back in 2017, Realbotix CEO Matt McCullen explained that such an accent was 'the least robotic' and sounded the most 'natural and developed' - a feature that would appeal much to clients as a sexual cyborg.

The comment itself could be downright baffling to some. Is this an implicit sexualisation of the Glaswegian accent? What makes a Glaswegian less robotic and more natural than, say, a Texan one? And if the Scottish accent was actually put in place for its perceived 'sauciness', could that be claimed as culturally unethical? If so, at its core, any accent used - regardless of its origin - would always be viewed as problematic by some. So should the debate be placed on 'whether or not the entire sex robot industry is ethical' instead?

"...accents play an indispensable role in shaping the robot 'in-groupness'"

Moving the spotlight to robots in general (sexual or not), questions of accents are not a trivial matter of discussion from a business perspective. At the 29th International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication in Naples, Italy, scholars Ilaria Torre and Sébastien Le Maguer addressed that accents play an indispensable role in shaping robot 'in-groupness'. This 'in-groupness', of course, is dependent on the subjective perspective of human interlocutors, a key feature of 'assimilation' that could improve robot-human relationships in the long run.

Torre and Le Manguer's conclusion was based on their own study. In a questionnaire administered to 500 British participants, the researchers aimed to understand what accents people would prefer if they actually were to own a robot. A striking finding is that a large proportion of responders would like their robot to speak with a Standard Southern British English (SSBE) accent, likely for reasons of accessibility among others. Irish accents were also popular among the participants, for motives unspecified in the study. Understandably (but also ironically), respondents wished for a robot voice that was, well, not robotic.

'... we can anticipate that debates on robots and their accents will continue for as long as they exist, and opinions on all points of the spectrum will co-exist in disharmony... robots, after all, do not have a human experience, so one may be compelled to question if the accents they possess embody anything meaningful at its core'.

As with other sensitive issues in society, we can anticipate that debates on robots and their accents will continue for as long as they exist, and opinions on all points of the spectrum will co-exist in disharmony. A detached opinion is that robots, after all, do not have a human experience, so one may be compelled to question if the accents they possess embody anything meaningful at its core. However, in the midst of an ongoing human debate, a provisional 'solution' may be possible. With the advancement of speech technology, robot owners (whatever their robots do) may benefit if there were a host of accents to choose from for their personal use. In a world where opinions on technology clash and accents become politicised, flexibility, as it seems, may be the less hurtful plan.