Google Assistant in the news

Google's recent I/O developer conference on May 8th, 2018 made waves with the announced updates for the Google Assistant. Among these updates were new features to promote more "natural" conversational applications. Among these updates are six new voice options that include John Legend's musical voicings... a new twist to add some celebrity branding to the palette of customization.  Other controversial adds are a "politeness" feature for aimed at children to "encourage polite conversation". Yikes! So much to unpack in all of this.  Moneyish's Nicole Pesce reached out to me for some thoughts on these updates and what it all means for the landscape of feminized virtual assistants.  Browse her write up of our (very brief) conversation on this here.  More thoughts (and far more developed thoughts) to follow in some of my academic pieces under way!