Virtual assistants are increasingly present in people’s lives, helping clear doubts and making everyday life easier. What they all have in common is a standard female voice and a woman’s name, such as Lu, Bia, Siri, Alexa, Bixby, Cortana, Nat.

According to a study released in May 2019 by UNESCO called “I’d Blush If I Could”, virtual AI assistants have been suffering verbal harassment of a sexual nature, to which they usually respond with tolerant, subservient and passive remarks.

The Hey, Update My Voice movement, in partnership with UNESCO was born out of this context, with the goal of teaching respect towards virtual assistants and, in addition, asking tech companies to update their assistants’ responses. Because if that happens to them, imagine what happens in real life with real women.

We launched a 360 campaign for the #HeyUpdateMyVoice movement, asking companies to update the responses of their virtual assistants when harassed, as a way to fight violence against real women.

We started with an open letter to CTOs and CEOs and Social Media posts, explaining the problem. After that we released a video/ film with real women representing AI assistants. We also invited people to join the cause and support it actively by submitting new replies to be used by virtual assistants.

The campaign was launched in February 2020 and remains active today. We started with an open letter and released a film. Over the months we kept the frequency with posts on social media and support from influencers who spontaneously joined the cause, generating a great discussion on the Brazilian internet.

So far, four Brazilian companies updated their AI responses to fight harassment, including Bradesco, one of the largest banks in Latin America.

More than 108 million users are directly impacted with this updates.

The campaign generated national discussion on social media, with the support of several influencers, virtual AI celebrities, NGOs and even CEOs.

The #HeyupdateMyVoice was subject at Brazilian TV news such as TV Globo, SP TV, Estadão, G1, Valor, FastCompany, and was the subject of debates on weekly TV programs (Fátima Bernardes Show), reaching an audience of more than 360 million people.