Amazon has responded to the controversy after its virtual assistant, Alexa, was accused of political bias for providing reasons to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris while refusing to offer similar responses for former President Trump.
According to a report in Fox Business, Amazon representatives informed House Judiciary Committee staffers that Alexa generated the pro-Harris response before the company implemented an override.
The report states that Alexa uses pre-programmed manual overrides created by Amazon’s information team to respond to certain user prompts. For example, when asked for reasons to vote for Trump or President Biden, Alexa would respond, “I cannot provide content that promotes this specific political party or candidate.”
Before the viral video’s release, Amazon had programmed manual overrides only for Biden and Trump, neglecting to add Harris due to the low number of users asking Alexa about reasons to vote for her. From July 21, when Harris entered the presidential race, to September 2, the day before Alexa’s pro-Harris responses went viral, users had prompted Alexa for reasons to vote for Trump 14,000 times, compared to only 225 times for Harris.
Amazon addressed the issue within one hour of the video being posted on X and going viral, implementing a manual override for questions about Harris within two hours. Prior to the fix, Fox News Digital received responses from Alexa highlighting Harris’s identity as a woman of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality, as well as her law-and-order credentials as a former prosecutor and attorney general.
During the briefing, Amazon apologized for Alexa’s display of political bias and acknowledged that it failed to meet its own standards for preventing Alexa from expressing political opinions or bias. The company has since audited its system to prevent Alexa from answering all election-related questions and has implemented manual overrides for all candidates and election-related prompts, not just presidential candidates.
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