More than 30% of users perceive voice assistants as friends: they are most often spoken to in a friendly way, but they can also be rude. This is evidenced by a study conducted by VK for Anti-Cyberbullying Day.

A voice assistant is a service based on artificial intelligence: it is able to recognize human speech and perform certain actions in response to voice commands. Voice assistants are often used in smartphones, smart speakers, web browsers.

Voice assistants include GoogleNow and GoogleAssistant, Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa and others.

The VK study found that 49% of those surveyed try to communicate politely with voice assistants. However, men are more likely to be rude than women: 12% of men admitted that from time to time they give voice assistant commands in an orderly tone. This is more likely if the voice assistant does not understand or does not respond to a request or command.

About a third of the study participants admitted to showing aggression toward the assistants, including yelling at the device and throwing the device, insulting and threatening. Women and men approximately equally express discontent, but men more often say phrases with sexual connotations - in this 8% of respondents admitted.

Voice assistants usually treat aggression addressed to them calmly - they joke about it, ask to stop or kindly clarify the reason for negative attitude of the user. However, some users note that they encounter some aggression on the part of voice assistants, such as unpleasant remarks, unsolicited advice, jokes, rudeness and comments about appearance, gender, nationality, age and gender.

And most users don't like it. 20% of women admitted that for them unpleasant remarks are a reason to stop using the voice assistant. At the same time, the same number of respondents who noticed aggression when communicating with the voice assistant responded in the same way. However, 17% of users are happy about the negative attitude of the assistant, about 15% are irritated and angry, 12% are confused, and 10% do not react to aggression addressed to them.