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    The Push For A Gender-Neutral Siri

    Siri, Alexa and Cortana all started out as female. Now a group of marketing executives, tech experts and academics are trying to make virtual assistants more egalitarian.
    by Laura Sydell Jul 09, 2018 3 minutes
    Siri, Alexa and Cortana all started out as female. Now a group of marketing executives, tech experts and academics are trying to make virtual assistants more egalitarian.

    Have you ever noticed something most virtual assistants have in common? They all started out female.

    One of the most famous, Amazon's Alexa, got her name because of CEO Jeff Bezos' preference. "The idea was creating the Star Trek computer. The Star Trek computer was a woman," says Alex Spinelli, who ran the team that created the software for Alexa.

    Spinelli is now the chief technology officer of LivePerson. His boss, CEO Robert LoCascio,

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