Book Review | The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot, by Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy (MIT Press, 2020)

Consumer AI is hella sexist-it's about time someone called it out.That's what Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy's book The Smart Wife does, from Alexa being modeled on the 1950s housewife to sex robots designed to frame sex in unconsensual ways.The argument builds around the titular theory of the "smart wife."These devices, according to the authors, are actually designed to act as surrogate wives and to take on the domestic labor traditionally coded as wife work.With this design comes all the sexism embedded in the role of wife-asdomestic-servant, thereby remediating 1950s sexism for the digital age.Building on similar critiques such as Safiya Noble's Algorithms of Oppression (2018) and Jennifer Rhee's The Robotic Imaginary (2018), the authors' aim is "to develop smart wives that promote gender equity and diversity" (209).This feminist reading is an important step in the analysis of consumer AI, and the examples are insightful, thoroughly researched, and related with hilarious irony.Following the first introductory chapter, the next four chapters each take on a specific digital assistant as a case study to analyze domestic labor, robot gender, resource extraction, and sex, respectively.Chapter six turns towards humans to examine sexist behavior directed at feminized AI; while chapter seven continues this human focus to examine men and technology, particularly in terms of domestic abuse and surveillance.All these chapters are filled with a wealth of surprising examples, delivered in a humorous and compelling style.This impressive research makes the book worth reading, for anyone interested in critical analysis of AI.