Alexa Fell for 2020 Election Crackpottery

Cat Zakrzewski, reporting for the Washington Post:

Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Asked about fraud in the race — in which Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump with 306 electoral college votes — the popular voice assistant said it was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,” citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives.

The 2020 races were “notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers,” according to Alexa, referencing Substack, a subscription newsletter, Alexa contended that Trump won Pennsylvania, citing “an Alexa answers contributor.”

The simple fact is that we need to treat everything from these Alexa/Siri/Google AI voice assistants with skepticism. But stop telling me Amazon is way ahead of Apple on this front.

★ Sunday, 22 October 2023