A quarter of people have fantasised sexually about their AI voice assistant, study says

IPhone has Siri, Amazon has Alexa, there's Cortana and surely someone, somewhere is using Google's Home.

What do they all have in common?

One in four people are apparently turned on by their voice assistants.

UK-based marketing company Mindshare has released a new report entitled 'Speakeasy: The future answers to you', an investigation into how people respond to voice-activated technology.

They used Steady-State Topography imaging techniques to assess 100 voice tech fans, analysing their emotional responses and brain activity while listening to their voice assistants.

According to the survey, an astonishing 26 per cent of regular users report having a sexual fantasy about their voice assistant.

That's just over one in four.

Indeed, 37 per cent of users responded that they "love their voice assistant so much that they wish it were a real person".

The study also showed that users of voice-activated technology start to develop "deeper emotional attachment" to their AI aids over time.

Although this might all sound like a poor remake of the 2013 film Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix stars as a man who falls in love with his computer operating system 'Samantha', there is actually a cultural basis for this response to technology.

Audio specialist and study contributor Nick Ryan explained:

For most of our cultural evolution as a species, humans have transmitted knowledge and ideas from one generation to another through oral tradition.

The voice is therefore perhaps the most innate and intuitive way for us to communicate.

'Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do.'

HT IFL Science

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