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IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent

Posted by kdawson on Tue Nov 04, 2008 05:29 PM
from the how-about-lee-and-robin dept.
Patents IBM
theodp writes "The USPTO has granted IBM a patent for utilizing naming conventions to assign gender-based avatars for instant messaging. A user named Teri, IBM explains, would be given a girl avatar, while a user named Terry would be provided with a boy avatar. The three IBM 'inventors' were stymied by users named Pat, who as a result will be assigned a 'generic, genderless human figure image as his or her avatar.' Way to honor that significant-technical-content patent pledge, Big Blue!"
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Submission: IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent by theodp (442580)
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IBM's Teri-is-a-Girl-and-Terry-is-a-Boy Patent 50 Comments More /

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  • English names only? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NotQuiteReal (608241) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:31PM (#25633833) Journal
    What about odd spellings?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by catch23 (97972)

      Yeah, what about Xie Hua? Is Xie a male or female?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Bieeanda (961632)
      You mean like my aunt Terry, who would be categorized as a man by that system?

    • Re:English names only? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ozamosi (615254) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:41PM (#25633985) Homepage

      My name is Robin, which is basically exclusively male here in Sweden (I've never met any females called Robin, but it's among the top ten most common boys names), which is mostly male in England, and which is mostly female in the US.

      Oh, and I run all my software in (US) English.

      I'd like to see the software that figures out the gender of all the Robin in the world!

      • Re:English names only? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by orclevegam (940336) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:56PM (#25634189) Journal
        Likewise Kyle, which although often male, is occasionally used as a female name. Then there are those that come up with entirely new names, or that use nicknames, or handles to contend with. Yeah, sorry, this sounds like it's utterly useless, you've taken what once was a simple question of "Are you male or female?", and turned it into "Based on your name our software thinks you're X, is this correct?". All they've done is taken a simple question and reworked it so that it makes a potentially embarrassing/insulting/annoying assumption about a person, which then needs to have steps put in place to insure that it's made the correct assumption, all for the sake of avoiding a simple binary question.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phatvw (996438)
      Why such a narrow patent? Why not patent an algorithm recognizing the patterns in English names in general to be applied in any User-interface rather just in an IM client?
      Also what is this bit about a "database storing anthroponomastic information to perform the anthroponomastic analysis of the username of the first user to determine the probable gender" Is that a table of known names vs gender stats based on public records? Or is it name fragments and endings matched to probability of gender? For example

    • RTFP (Score:4, Informative)

      by The Amazing Fish Boy (863897) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @06:19PM (#25634411) Homepage Journal
      The whole point of the patent is that it's for cross-cultural communication, not just for English names only. It's not a totally unreasonable idea. It sounds like it looks the user's gender up based on where they are from and what their name is. Odd spellings would likely be classified as unisex, unless there were a general rule for naming conventions (e.g. In North America, names ending in 'i' are likely to be female.) Furthermore, you could build up your 'odd spelling' database by recording the gender people select for themselves.

      The example ozamosi posted below [slashdot.org] would be covered fairly well by this patent: Robins in North America would be classified as female, but Robins from Sweden would be classified as male.

      My criticism of the invention's effectiveness is that it's not completely fool-proof, and would inevitably assign the wrong gender for people with the spelling typically adopted by the opposite gender. It might be a worse "faux pas" to address a male as female (or vice versa), than to leave assumptions of their gender out of the picture. Of course this might vary from culture to culture, and I really don't know about that. It might be more effective to just force the user to input their gender, but this would have to be done on every client, which could be problematic.

      Of course, I'm not sure whether we should be assisting the enforcement of "societal conventions" based on differences in gender, but that's a different topic from the invention's effectiveness.

      By the way, here's the relevant part:

      an expansive list of names compiled from those used in many different cultures catalogued according to gender (that is, male, female, or unisex), a list of rules for associating a username not included in the list of names with a particular culture, and a list of rules derived from naming conventions that are employed in many different cultures catalogued culturally, linguistically, nationally, regionally, and/or according to other relevant anthroponomastic criteria.

    • What about odd spellings coupled with gender ambiguity...like Jayne Cobb?

  • I know a Terry... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ceoyoyo (59147) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:38PM (#25633941)

    who is going to be very irritated when it's assumed she's a boy.

    • [I know a Terry] who is going to be very irritated when it's assumed she's a boy.

      Yet I imagine that mistake is still preferable to calling her generic and genderless.

  • Strange (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The filing date is February 28, 2008.

    The only way a patent gets through that quick is 'Accelerated Examination' (decision in 1 year or less).

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by eln (21727)

      Apparently IBM is in a big hurry to start offending people by misrepresenting their genders.

  • Standard Behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nerdfest (867930) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:39PM (#25633961)
    Like most companies, IBM is only 'not evil' when it's extremely convenient, or there's some marketing value to be had.

    • Re:Standard Behaviour (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 04 2008, @06:39PM (#25634623) Homepage

      Geeze, here we go again. Listen, patenting stupid crap isn't evil. *Suing* other people for your stupid crap patents is evil. Countersuing other people for violating your stupid crap patents after they've sued you for violating their stupid crap patents is simply a business reality these days.

      Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Novell have to patent any little thing that floats into their heads that the patent office will let them patent. They all do it, and the purpose is mostly for the sake of maintaining a defensive-patent war chest to keep the other big companies at bay with mutually assured destruction.

      Start complaining about them being evil when they sue someone.

  • What, do they watch old Saturday Night Live episodes [wikipedia.org]? ..bruce..

  • So, what did they decide for... (Score:3, Informative)

    by msauve (701917) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:39PM (#25633965)
    the name Bambi?

    It's commonly thought of, and used, as a girl's name, but in one of its most famous uses (the movie) it's a male name.

  • No one uses boring avatar names (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gizzmonic (412910) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:42PM (#25633995) Homepage Journal

    Give me a break, no one uses names like "Jill" and "Steve" for their avatars! They use names like xXDeath_StalkerXx and KillMurder_415 and awesome stuff like that. This patent ain't worth a case of Bawls.

  • Maybe they should ask these guys [pubpat.org]? May I suggest this [pubpat.org] as an obvious avatar for Pat?

  • with the first name Tracy. I wonder what they assign him?

    This is just trouble waiting to happen. When ever you try to assign gender on anything except the Chromosomes it will fail.

    • Not even that. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot.kadin@x ... t minus language> on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:55PM (#25634169) Homepage Journal

      When ever you try to assign gender on anything except the Chromosomes it will fail.

      Actually it fails pretty spectacularly when you try to determine it based on chromosomes, too. There are XY women with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), and both XXY and XYY men. In many cases, especially those of AIS, they may go their whole lives without knowing that their chromosomes convey something different than their sex organs.

      And using sex organs starts to fail as well when you get into intersexed and transgendered people; someone's sex organs may not match the gender they 'pass' as in social contexts, or that they prefer to be treated as.

      It is anything but a black and white issue.

      • Re:Not even that. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by shermo (1284310) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @07:17PM (#25635031)

        I always thought it was a black and white issue.

        You simply refer to people how they want you to refer to them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by syousef (465911)

        Actually it fails pretty spectacularly when you try to determine it based on chromosomes, too. There are XY women with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), and both XXY and XYY men. In many cases, especially those of AIS, they may go their whole lives without knowing that their chromosomes convey something different than their sex organs.

        I agree it's difficult to assign a gender (if you only allow male, female) to an XY woman with AIS since you have external female appears with internal undescended testic

  • What about Kingrames? would they erroneously give me a pharaoh's hat and pimp cane?
  • A lot of prominent organizations on the internet are somehow posting in /., clearing doubts about the stuff they do - either openly, like some, or anonymously, like some others.

    i wouldnt even want to think that ibm thinks they are above us. im looking forward to someone explaining the bullshit going on with those patents either openly, or anonymously here.

  • Leslie, Tracy, Sam? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by camperdave (969942) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @05:53PM (#25634145) Journal
    I wonder where that leaves, Leslie Nielson, Tracy Lawrence, Charlie Dore, Alex McKenna, and the like.

  • The three IBM 'inventors' were stymied by users named Pat, who as a result will be assigned a 'generic, genderless human figure image as his or her avatar.'

    Congratulations! It's a patent!

  • What's worse, is that it's done dumbly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cajun Hell (725246) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @06:07PM (#25634293) Homepage Journal

    It's amazing that they analyze [wikipedia.org] the name so hard. I would just throw a database at the problem. It's inconceivable that IBM doesn't have a shitload of demographic databases around, which already have name-sex pairs. Just select sex, count(*) where name='terry' group by sex. If the ratio is overwhelming in one direction, choose that, and if the margin of error is too high (and I'd set that pretty low to avoid pissing off Miss Pat), pick neutral. That would work with any language, too (assuming IBM has a database for that culture).

  • I dare you.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Atriqus (826899) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @06:14PM (#25634357) Homepage
    IBM, I dare you find a name where there's no one also by that name of the opposite sex.

  • Wouldn't it be easier..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yuan-Lung (582630) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @07:39PM (#25635293)
    ...to just ASK the user during the sign up?

    Are you [ ]Male [ ]Female

    Would you like to use a avatar that is
    [ ] Male
    [ ] Female
    [ ] Generic Genderless
    [ ] Tentacle Monster
    [ ] Cowboyneal

  • Why not just ASK?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Locke2005 (849178) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @08:10PM (#25635535)
    My friends Gail and Carol might have a problem with this method, since both of them are male... Sam and Mel might have problem too, since Sam is short for Samantha and Mel is short for Melonie.
    I prefer the solution used in the interactive game "Leather Goddesses of Phobos": at the start of the game, you have a sudden urge to use the restroom. Your gender for the rest of the game depends on which restroom door you choose.
    Really, I think arbitrarily guessing people's gender is just going to alienate them when you guess wrong.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mr_mischief (456295)

      Anyone who implemented this would probably be smart enough to let you change the avatar during the sign-up process. This is a way to placate the ladies who get all upset that the systems tend to default to male avatars which is slightly more accurate than randomly assigning one or the other. A checkbox before the avatar default is chosen I'd think would be even more accurate, though.

    • Re:Have to post anon here (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dzimas (547818) on Tuesday November 04 2008, @06:31PM (#25634525)
      All names are made up, when you get right down to it. We have traditionally used a fairly small set of Anglicized names in North America, but that's changing. There are lots of kids of all colors with some fairly creative (and occasionally bizarre) names. The most popular male baby names in the USA include Jaxon, Jaden and Xander. Popular girl's names include Alyssa, Ashlyn and Caitlyn. These are hardly traditional. Common "Afro-American" names are merely an evolving sub-set of modern names. Most importantly, many follow fairly predictable patterns... Jada, Tierra and Imani have a and i endings, denoting female. Darnell and Darius have masculine endings, and names starting in De (as in DeShaw) are male while La denotes female (LaToya).

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