by Matt Vespa, Townhall:
Even Amazon is in on the story for those who feel there was funny business during the 2020 election. When asked, ‘Alexa’ essentially said that the 2020 election was stolen. It triggered The Washington Post earlier this month, whose article framed this incident as a potential new battle in the information age amid the push to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence. It’s something the Left supports, viewing it as a vehicle to erase the working class, specifically the rural white working class. Now, there are questions because this device went off script about the 2020 election (via WaPo):
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
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 service. Alexa contended that Trump won Pennsylvania, citing “an Alexa answers contributor.”
Multiple investigations into the 2020 election have revealed no evidence of fraud, and Trump faces federal criminal charges connected to his efforts to overturn the election. Yet Alexa disseminates misinformation about the race, even as parent company Amazon promotes the tool as a reliable election news source to more than 70 million estimated users.
Amazon declined to explain why its voice assistant draws 2020 election answers from unvetted sources.
“These responses were errors that were delivered a small number of times, and quickly fixed when brought to our attention,” Amazon spokeswoman Lauren Raemhild said in a statement. “We continually audit and improve the systems we have in place for detecting and blocking inaccurate content.”
Raemhild said that during elections, Alexa works with “credible sources” like Reuters, Ballotpedia and RealClearPolitics to provide real-time information.
After The Washington Post contacted Amazon for comment, Alexa’s responses changed.
[…]
Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the Jan. 6 committee, called Alexa’s assertions nearly three years after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol “alarming.”
“If major corporations are helping to give life to the ‘big lie’ years after the fact, they’re enabling the animating narrative of American domestic extremism to endure,” said Glick, who now serves as a policy counsel at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. “They should be doing everything they can to stop the ‘big lie’ in its tracks, lest we see history repeat itself.”
