Amazon's Alexa Found To Promote Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

BYCole Blake2.8K Views
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Amazon, Alexa, Antisemitic
Amazon's Alexa device has been found to share antisemitic responses.

Amazon is launching an investigation into it's Alexa device, after the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism discovered that certain questions prompt antisemitic responses from Alexa.

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“We were appalled, therefore, to find that the Alexa voice service offers messages from antisemitic websites and conspiracy theories, using selective quotes and misleading sources in answer to a number of questions about Jewish people, the Holocaust and antisemitism,” a letter written by the group to UK Amazon executives states. "Can you explain how this has happened and what you will do, immediately, to rectify this? ... The matter has been raised with the Home Secretary and we will be contacting the police, so that they might take a view on any breaches of communications or racial incitement legislation."

The group found that in response to many questions about Judaism, Alexa would cite information from the "Jew Watch" Wikipedia page, "Jew Watch" being an antisemitic Holocaust denial website.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy towards discriminatory and offensive content," Amazon executives said in a statement. "When we detect this type of content, we actively investigate and block responses that don't meet our policy, as we did in this case."

Amazon has also supported the Black Lives Matter movement, earlier this year.

[Via]


About The Author
Cole Blake is a current staff writer at HotNewHipHop based out of New York City. He began writing for the site as an intern back in 2018 while finishing his B.A. in Journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s covered a number of breaking stories for HNHH. These include the ongoing YSL RICO trial, the allegations surrounding Diddy, and much more. His work also extends outside of hip-hop, having written extensively about a myriad of topics including politics, sports, and pop culture. He’s attended several music festivals to provide coverage for the site as well, such as Rolling Loud and Governors Ball.
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