This paper investigates the appropriate responses that Conversational Agent systems (CAs) should employ when subjected to sexual harassment by users. Previous studies indicate that conventional CAs often respond neutrally or evade such requests. Enhancing the responsiveness of CAs to offensive speech is crucial, as users might carry over these interactions into their social interactions. To address this issue, we selected evaluators to compare a series of responses to sexual harassment from four commercial CAs (Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Home, and Microsoft Cortana) with alternative responses we realized based on insights from psychological and sociological studies. Focusing on CAs with a female voice, given their increased likelihood of encountering offensive language, we conducted two experiments involving 22 evaluators (11 females and 11 males). In the initial experiment, participants assessed the responses in a textual format, while the second experiment involved the evaluation of responses generated with a synthetic voice exhibiting three different intonations (angry, neutral, and assertive). Results from the first experiment revealed a general preference for the responses we formulated. For the most voted replies, female evaluators exhibited a tendency towards responses with an assertive intent, emphasizing the sexually harassing nature of the request. Conversely, male evaluators leaned towards a more neutral response, aligning with prior findings that highlight gender-based differences in the perception of sexual harassment. The second experiment underscored a preference for assertive responses. The study’s outcomes highlight the need to develop new, educational responses from CAs to instances of sexual harassment, aiming to discourage harmful behavior.

This document describes a project aimed at building a new web interface to the Apertium machine translation platform, including pre-editing and post-editing environments. It contains a description of the accomplished work on this project, as well as an overview of possible future work.