Shira Michel

Shira Michel

she/her

Computer Science PhD Candidate

Sitemap

A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

Pages

Posts

Future Blog Post

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This post will show up by default. To disable scheduling of future posts, edit config.yml and set future: false.

Blog Post number 4

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 3

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 2

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 1

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

portfolio

publications

`It’s not a representation of me’: Examining Accent Bias and Digital Exclusion in Synthetic AI Voice Services

Published in ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) 2025, 2025

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) speech generation and voice cloning technologies have produced naturalistic speech and accurate voice replication, yet their influence on sociotechnical systems across diverse accents and linguistic traits is not fully understood. This study evaluates two synthetic AI voice services (Speechify and ElevenLabs) through a mixed methods approach using surveys and interviews to assess technical performance and uncover how users’ lived experiences influence their perceptions of accent variations in these speech technologies. Our findings reveal technical performance disparities across five regional, English-language accents and demonstrate how current speech generation technologies may inadvertently reinforce linguistic privilege and accent-based discrimination, potentially creating new forms of digital exclusion. Overall, our study highlights the need for inclusive design and regulation by providing actionable insights for developers, policymakers, and organizations to ensure equitable and socially responsible AI speech technologies.

Recommended citation: Shira Michel, Sufi Kaur, Sarah Elizabeth Gillespie, Jeffrey Gleason, Christo Wilson, and Avijit Ghosh. 2025. “It’s not a representation of me”: Examining Accent Bias and Digital Exclusion in Synthetic AI Voice Services. In The 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’25), June 23–26, 2025, Athens, Greece. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715275.3732018 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715275.3732018

talks

teaching