According to Fox Business, a source claims Amazon did not pre-program its voice-enabled assistant Alexa to respond to a question about why someone should vote for Vice President Kamala Harris while refusing to answer the same question about former President Donald Trump. It was instead an oversight, as about 6,000 percent more people asked the smart home device about Donald Trump than Kamala Harris.
Last month, when users asked Alexa why they should vote for Harris, Amazon’s voice-enabled assistant provided a detailed list of reasons, but when the same question was asked about Trump, Alexa said, “I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate.”
As Breitbart News reported:
In response to inquiries from Variety about the discrepancy in Alexa’s responses, an Amazon spokesperson clarified that this was an error that the company quickly rectified. The spokesperson emphasized that Amazon makes continual changes to enhance the systems it has in place for detecting and blocking content that violates its policies. The tech giant also stated that it has dedicated teams working to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
Trump campaign officials were quick to respond, with campaign spokesman Steven Cheung sharing a post on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption “BIG TECH ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
A source told Fox Business that Alexa generated the pro-Harris response because Amazon had only programmed manual overrides for questions about Biden vs. Trump, and did not add Harris because very few users were asking the device about reasons to vote for her.
From July 21 — when Harris entered the presidential race after Biden was ousted — to September 2, users asked Alexa to provide reasons to vote for Trump 14,000 times, while asking the same question about Harris 225 times, which is a 6,000 percent difference.
Then on September 3, Amazon apparently became aware of the issue after a video of an Alexa user demonstrating the difference between the device’s responses went viral.
Watch Below:
Amazon fixed the problem with a manual override within two hours of the video being posted.
The source added that while the company has a policy that aims to prevent Alexa from “having a political opinion” or “bias for or against a particular party or particular candidate… obviously we are here today because we did not meet that bar in this incident.”
As Breitbart News reported, Amazon insisted last month that Alexa does not have any political opinions — and that Alexa’s pro-Harris responses were a mistake.
Amusingly, Alexa claimed one reason to vote for Harris is that she is a “strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment.” The device also bizarrely noted that Harris “is a female of color” as part of its response for why people should vote for Trump’s opponent.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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