  We investigate how people perceive ChatGPT, and, in particular, how they
assign human-like attributes such as gender to the chatbot. Across five
pre-registered studies (N = 1,552), we find that people are more likely to
perceive ChatGPT to be male than female. Specifically, people perceive male
gender identity (1) following demonstrations of ChatGPT's core abilities (e.g.,
providing information or summarizing text), (2) in the absence of such
demonstrations, and (3) across different methods of eliciting perceived gender
(using various scales and asking to name ChatGPT). Moreover, we find that this
seemingly default perception of ChatGPT as male can reverse when ChatGPT's
feminine-coded abilities are highlighted (e.g., providing emotional support for
a user).
