  Commercial voice assistants are largely feminized and associated with
stereotypically feminine traits such as warmth and submissiveness. As these
assistants continue to be adopted for everyday uses, it is imperative to
understand how the portrayed gender shapes the voice assistant's ability to
mitigate errors, which are still common in voice interactions. We report a
study (N=40) that examined the effects of voice gender (feminine, ambiguous,
masculine), error mitigation strategies (apology, compensation) and
participant's gender on people's interaction behavior and perceptions of the
assistant. Our results show that AI assistants that apologized appeared warmer
than those offered compensation. Moreover, male participants preferred
apologetic feminine assistants over apologetic masculine ones. Furthermore,
male participants interrupted AI assistants regardless of perceived gender more
frequently than female participants when errors occurred. Our results suggest
that the perceived gender of a voice assistant biases user behavior, especially
for male users, and that an ambiguous voice has the potential to reduce biases
associated with gender-specific traits.
