Is Siri sexist?

Are the female voices behind Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa amplifying gender bias?

The United Nations thinks so.

A recent report by the U.N.’s culture and science organization, UNESCO, raises concerns about what it describes as the servile and submissive personalities built into default female-voiced assistants operated by Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

The report is called “I’d Blush If I Could.” It’s a reference to an answer Siri gives after hearing sexist insults from users.

The authors worry that millions of people are getting accustomed to commanding female-voiced assistants that are “unfailingly polite,” even when confronted with harassment from humans.

“Obedient and obliging machines that pretend to be women are entering our homes, cars and offices,” says Saniye Gülser Corat, UNESCO’s director of gender equality. “Their hardwired subservience influences how people speak to female voices and models how women respond to requests and express themselves.”

The agency urges tech companies to stop making digital assistants female by default. It wants companies to program assistants to discourage gender-based insults and abusive language. It also urges the tech industry to pay attention to “who is gendering” these products, by narrowing the stark gender gap in software and artificial intelligence fields.