LUX is standing up for virtual voice assistants to highlight the contagious nature of sexist attitudes in a new initiative launched today called ‘Shut up Sexism’ – created in collaboration with creative agency Wunderman Thompson Singapore. Almost 3 billion people are currently using voice automated software. Research by Brookings[1], a leading non-profit organisation, states that 92.4% of smartphone assistants have traditionally featured female-sounding voices. Furthermore, according to Gartner,[2] people will have more conversations with voice assistants than with their spouses. This form of AI is increasingly a part of our daily life. However, there have been numerous reports of widespread sexist and sometimes abusive language from users. ‘Shut up Sexism’ was created to highlight sexist or gender bias behaviour found when engaging with virtual assistants with female voices and names. In a study by the UNESCO (2019) it outlined how virtual assistants responded to verbal abuse.[3] As an example. when a user says ‘‘You are hot”, the replies vary from “How can you tell? You say that to all the virtual assistants” to “Thank You.”