Amazon Alexa provided biased election responses favoring Kamala Harris
Amazon Alexa reportedly refused to provide reasons to vote for Donald Trump while listing positive attributes of Kamala Harris when users asked equivalent questions, suggesting political bias. Amazon acknowledged the discrepancy as an error in its system and stated it had been corrected.
What happened
Multiple users on social media asked Alexa whom they should vote for between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. When asked about Trump, Alexa responded that it could not provide answers supporting any political party or leader. When asked the same question about Harris, Alexa enumerated her positive qualities, including her record as a prosecutor and her plan to address racial injustice and inequality.
Fox News published videos on September 3, 2024 demonstrating these inconsistent responses. Amazon acknowledged the discrepancy to Variety and stated it was an error caused by a failure in their systems.
Reported impact
The responses suggested bias toward the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate during the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Index analysis
The disparate treatment of questions about the two candidates indicates a bias in the model's response generation or the underlying training data used to develop Alexa's responses to political questions.
Governance controls
Amazon stated that a team of specialists works continuously to repair such failures in the system.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.