"OK Aura, Be Fair With Me": Demographics-Agnostic Training for Bias Mitigation in Wake-up Word Detection

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05830v1
• Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:02:04 GMT
• Title: "OK Aura, Be Fair With Me": Demographics-Agnostic Training for Bias Mitigation in Wake-up Word Detection
• Abstract summary: This study evaluates the effectiveness of demographics-agnostic training techniques in mitigating performance disparities among speakers of varying sex, age, and accent.<n>One of the evaluated techniques achieves a Predictive Disparity reduction of 39.94% for sex, 83.65% for age, and 40.48% for accent when compared to the baseline.
• Score: 40.06814247417912
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Voice-based interfaces are widely used; however, achieving fair Wake-up Word detection across diverse speaker populations remains a critical challenge due to persistent demographic biases. This study evaluates the effectiveness of demographics-agnostic training techniques in mitigating performance disparities among speakers of varying sex, age, and accent. We utilize the OK Aura database for our experiments, employing a training methodology that excludes demographic labels, which are reserved for evaluation purposes. We explore (i) data augmentation techniques to enhance model generalization and (ii) knowledge distillation of pre-trained foundational speech models. The experimental results indicate that these demographics-agnostic training techniques markedly reduce demographic bias, leading to a more equitable performance profile across different speaker groups. Specifically, one of the evaluated techniques achieves a Predictive Disparity reduction of 39.94\% for sex, 83.65\% for age, and 40.48\% for accent when compared to the baseline. This study highlights the effectiveness of label-agnostic methodologies in fostering fairness in Wake-up Word detection.

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