I found the first one (female AI, hairdresser) amazingly compelling, but the second (male AI, restaurant) sounded like The Good Doctor's autistic lead character, and to me, the callee sounded bemused at him.
Part of this is definitely that the girl voice sounds cute, and this partially disables my cognition.
But objectively, her approach is more tentative and polite, whereas the guy voice is more direct and assertive.
They might not want the guy voice to take on those feminine qualities, but it would make the interaction work better - so female AI's dominate.
The effect on the listener may also help - however, I'm not at all sure that other people (especially women) react as I do to the cute voice. They might even find the the Good Doctor male approach better - though I can't imagine that.
The trick of inserting "ums" is very helpful, but because they use the same sound-bite in the same way, it sounds mechanical after you've heard several examples. In the examples towards the end of the page, the odd latencies and (surprising) changes in volume were additionally offpitting.
After a few calls, recipients will recognize the patterns (esp if they use the same voice - can they varying voices convincingly?), and it might be better to have an honest reverse-menu system.
All that said, the first girl voice was great, and there will be progress.
Part of this is definitely that the girl voice sounds cute, and this partially disables my cognition.
But objectively, her approach is more tentative and polite, whereas the guy voice is more direct and assertive.
They might not want the guy voice to take on those feminine qualities, but it would make the interaction work better - so female AI's dominate.
The effect on the listener may also help - however, I'm not at all sure that other people (especially women) react as I do to the cute voice. They might even find the the Good Doctor male approach better - though I can't imagine that.
The trick of inserting "ums" is very helpful, but because they use the same sound-bite in the same way, it sounds mechanical after you've heard several examples. In the examples towards the end of the page, the odd latencies and (surprising) changes in volume were additionally offpitting.
After a few calls, recipients will recognize the patterns (esp if they use the same voice - can they varying voices convincingly?), and it might be better to have an honest reverse-menu system.
All that said, the first girl voice was great, and there will be progress.