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Yes. It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft") from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to women. When my sister visits, it almost never re

Yes. It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft") from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to women. When my sister visits, it almost never responded to her for example. And in my personal experience, I used to have a very deep voice and it always responded to me. I decided I would rather have a more androgynous voice and did some voice training to accomplish that and use a pretty neutral pitch. Now it only responds to my normal voice about 50% of the time, so I intentionally drop my voice an octave whenever I speak to it. But somehow it's not just about pitch either. I have friends who are trans men, and speak in a deep voice but they still have trouble getting Mycroft to respond.

veidr 4y ago
OK, I see. Really interesting, but I guess not surprising. We talk a lot about inherent/implicit bias these days, and that's probably an example of it. I wonder if the Mycroft project people are aware of the issue?
- EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
  They are: https://mycroft.ai/blog/hey-mycroft-listen-to-me/ https://mycroft.ai/blog/hey-mycroft-listen-to-me/ Although it hasn't gotten better from my perspective. But until I searched for this, I was totally unaware they've provided an easy way to train your own model for the wakeword! https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customizations/wake-word#training-a-wake-word-model https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz... I will have to try that and if I remember I'll update here if it improves my situation in a few days
sampo 4y ago
> It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft") from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to women. They have instructions on how to train your own version of the wakeword listener. https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-own-model https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-own-...

veidr 4y ago

OK, I see. Really interesting, but I guess not surprising. We talk a lot about inherent/implicit bias these days, and that's probably an example of it. I wonder if the Mycroft project people are aware of the issue?

EntropyIsAHoax 4y ago
They are: https://mycroft.ai/blog/hey-mycroft-listen-to-me/ https://mycroft.ai/blog/hey-mycroft-listen-to-me/ Although it hasn't gotten better from my perspective. But until I searched for this, I was totally unaware they've provided an easy way to train your own model for the wakeword! https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customizations/wake-word#training-a-wake-word-model https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz... I will have to try that and if I remember I'll update here if it improves my situation in a few days

sampo 4y ago

> It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft") from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to women. They have instructions on how to train your own version of the wakeword listener. https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-own-model https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-own-...