Well Siri isn't female (and "Siri" as a name isn't a girl or boy name per se), its voice gender varies depending on the country. Apple uses the highest quality voice they have as the default. If you ask Siri what's its gender, it famously replies "I haven't been assigned a gender".
Even then though, female voice usually wins for phone voice services. Why?
Turns out males voices are more "lossy" over plain-old-telephone-service and over tiny tinny speakers (like on the iPhone).
The frequency range of a female voice maps to less loss in this speaker/service range compared to a deep male voice, where the lower frequencies get lost. So female voices are easier to understand in such circumstances.
This explains in part why OSX has a male voice, because a Mac comes by default with much better speakers than a phone does. Even then deeper voices are still not preferred. The "in a time..." movie trailer voice isn't coming to an AI assistant any time soon.
As for Cortana, the basically nude Halo AI bimbo, you have a point there, awkward choice for a commercial product, but that's Microsoft's problem. They've always had awkward marketing/branding choices, so this fits in.
As for Betty, "Betty the secretary" reference is quite obvious, but as a personal project, I'd say he's forgiven.
Even then though, female voice usually wins for phone voice services. Why?
Turns out males voices are more "lossy" over plain-old-telephone-service and over tiny tinny speakers (like on the iPhone).
The frequency range of a female voice maps to less loss in this speaker/service range compared to a deep male voice, where the lower frequencies get lost. So female voices are easier to understand in such circumstances.
This explains in part why OSX has a male voice, because a Mac comes by default with much better speakers than a phone does. Even then deeper voices are still not preferred. The "in a time..." movie trailer voice isn't coming to an AI assistant any time soon.
As for Cortana, the basically nude Halo AI bimbo, you have a point there, awkward choice for a commercial product, but that's Microsoft's problem. They've always had awkward marketing/branding choices, so this fits in.
As for Betty, "Betty the secretary" reference is quite obvious, but as a personal project, I'd say he's forgiven.