Samsung scraps calling female assistant 'chipper,' male 'confident'

Samsung hastily scrubbed the descriptions of male and female voices for its newly launched Bixby voice assistant Wednesday after users pointed out describing a woman's voice as "chipper" and "cheerful" and a male voice as "assertive" "confident" played into well-worn gender stereotypes. 

“We are constantly learning from customer feedback. We have removed the hashtag descriptions from the Bixby service,” Samsung said in a statement to USA Today.

On Wednesday, Samsung enabled the owners of its latest Galaxy smartphones, the S8 and S8-Plus, to download Bixby, a voice-activated artificial intelligence assistant that's meant to rival Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. 

Inside the "language and speaking style" menu, users had the option to decide between a male or female voice. The male voice was described as "#assertive #confident #clear" while the female voice was described as "#chipper #clear #cheerful".

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Studies of men and women in the workplace have found that such preconceived character traits contribute to an unequal playing field. Whereas a man who takes charge is considered a leader and assertive, a woman using the same leadership style gets labeled with negative terms — bossy, aggressive, or scary. Positive traits associated with women, such as friendliness or nurturing, make them less likely to be seen as problem solvers.

Twitter user Scooba @wrongsideof21 tweeted, "@SamsungMobileUS #bixby Um... Those are hashtags in the actual Bixby menu. Maybe #Samsung should rethink them. #confident #assertive #clear". 

Eli Blumenthal contributed to this report.

Follow USA Today's Madeline Purdue on Twitter @madelinepurdue.