Amazon has responded to the controversy after its digital assistant, Alexa, was accused of political bias for offering causes to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris whereas refusing to supply comparable responses for former President Trump.
Based on a report in Fox Enterprise, Amazon representatives knowledgeable Home Judiciary Committee staffers that Alexa generated the pro-Harris response earlier than the corporate applied an override.
The report states that Alexa makes use of pre-programmed guide overrides created by Amazon’s data group to answer sure consumer prompts. For instance, when requested for causes to vote for Trump or President Biden, Alexa would reply, “I can not present content material that promotes this particular political social gathering or candidate.”
Earlier than the viral video’s launch, Amazon had programmed guide overrides just for Biden and Trump, neglecting so as to add Harris because of the low variety of customers asking Alexa about causes to vote for her. From July 21, when Harris entered the presidential race, to September 2, the day earlier than Alexa’s pro-Harris responses went viral, customers had prompted Alexa for causes to vote for Trump 14,000 occasions, in comparison with solely 225 occasions for Harris.
Amazon addressed the difficulty inside one hour of the video being posted on X and going viral, implementing a guide override for questions on Harris inside two hours. Previous to the repair, Fox Information Digital acquired responses from Alexa highlighting Harris’s id as a girl of colour with a complete plan to handle racial injustice and inequality, in addition to her law-and-order credentials as a former prosecutor and lawyer normal.
Throughout the briefing, Amazon apologized for Alexa’s show of political bias and acknowledged that it failed to satisfy its personal requirements for stopping Alexa from expressing political beliefs or bias. The corporate has since audited its system to forestall Alexa from answering all election-related questions and has applied guide overrides for all candidates and election-related prompts, not simply presidential candidates.
