Amazon's Alexa Found To Promote Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

Amazon's Alexa device has been found to share antisemitic responses.

BYCole Blake
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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.

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About The Author
Cole Blake is currently an Editor at HotNewHipHop based out of Brooklyn, New York. He began working at the site as an intern back in 2018 while studying journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s graduated with a bachelor's degree and written extensively about a wide range of topics including pop culture, film & television, politics, video games, sports, and much more. He’s also covered music festivals such as Gov. Ball and Rolling Loud. You can find him publishing work for HNHH from Monday to Wednesday or on weekends. On the sports front, Cole’s a passionate NBA and NFL fan with his favorite teams being the Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Lakers. He also roots for the Yankees whenever he finds himself at Yankee Stadium or the Red Storm when in the company of other SJU alumni. His favorite hip-hop artists are billy woods, Earl Sweatshirt, Cam’ron, MIKE, and Mach-Hommy.