Controversy erupted last month over responses given by Amazon’s Echo device to voters’ questions regarding the reasons to vote for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Most Amazon Echos feature a virtual personal assistant known as “Alexa”, which can provide information such as the weather, current affairs, and why you should vote for the Democratic nominee [1] in a presidential election.
Since a video noting Alexa’s different responses – namely a refusal to give reasons to vote for Trump while listing off several for Harris – spread like wildfire online, GOP lawmakers have investigated a possible election interference case.
According to Fox Business [2], Amazon told lawmakers that the AI technology had not been updated to reflect Harris’ new status as the Democratic Party presidential nominee. As a result, for a period of six weeks, Alexa freely gave reasons to vote for Harris under the assumption that she was not a presidential candidate [3].
Although Amazon may have faced questions why this oversight was not spotted sooner, the truth was that they simply were unaware of the issue due to such a low frequency of requests as to why you should vote for Harris. Such queries were only asked 225 times from July 21 to Sept. 2, compared to 14,000 times for Trump – a 6,000% difference!
#BREAKING [4]: @amazon [5] caves to Judiciary Committee investigators on Alexa – Trump controversy.
The company admitted only a few people asked why they should vote for Kamala Harris. 😂 pic.twitter.com/f3koSJ1mjF [6]
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) October 24, 2024 [7]
Many on social media could not help but laugh.
No one even asks Alexa about Kamala. 😂😂
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) October 24, 2024 [8]
225 to 14,000 sounds like the polls we are seeing. She’s fallen flat on her face.
— Mike Leigh Torres (@MikeLeighTorres) October 24, 2024 [9]
Wow, that’s a surprising admission! The intersection of tech and politics never fails to entertain! 😂
— czverse.𝕏⚔️ (@czverse) October 25, 2024 [10]
Other commentors were less convinced.
This was intentional and for the 14,000 people who asked why vote for Trump, Alexa should come back and apologize and list all the great reasons why to vote for him!
— Gail Alfar (@GailAlfarATX) October 25, 2024 [11]
This is a distraction from the point— why was it programmed to ignore the question towards Trump but it was coded to respond in regards to Harris?
— nova roman (@PopUpVideo88) October 25, 2024 [12]
If you enjoyed this article, check out WokeSpy [13] for more like it.