New AI Editor From Microsoft Word Will Scold You For Gendered Language

Microsoft's latest plan is using artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure that what you write is inclusive.

On May 6, the tech giant announced that its AI-powered Ideas future would be integrated into World Online which is the cloud version of Microsoft Word, the famous document processor.

Microsoft promotes the use of gender-neutral language.

The Mission Of AI

According to Microsoft's post, Ideas will help users increase the clarity and improve the structure of documents. Besides, it also offers suggestions on a more inclusive language. AI will help future documents use gender-neutral language and bring equality to everyone.

The example in the Microsoft post shows that Ideas has raised the red flag when users use the word "policeman" instead of a more generic word like a police officer.

Gendered Language

Gendered language can be interpreted as a language bias for a specific gender. In the English language, there have been different sex-specific terms for people or careers. For example, "businessman" or "waitress", or how we use words he, him, and his to refer to everyone when in general like "a doctor should know how to communicate with his patients".

From time to time, the tendency of male versions appeared before female versions in binominals such as "men and women", "brothers and sisters", "Mr and Mrs", and "boys and girls". And instead of using "manpower", "mankind", or "man-made", we should use completely gender-neutral words like "humankind", "workforce", "artificial", ..

A Future For Everyone To Feel Welcome

According to the Linguistic Society of America:

So if this is really the message that Microsoft wants to convey when working on Ideas, then we should give a compliment to Microsoft.