Accusations of sexism have surfaced against Amazon’s AI assistant, Alexa, due to its inability to provide accurate responses to inquiries relating to the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Dr. Joanne Rodda, an esteemed lecturer in psychiatry at Kent and Medway Medical School, was the first to discover this discrepancy. Inquiring about the women’s football match between England and Australia scheduled for Wednesday (August 16), Alexa displayed ignorance and wrongly stated that there was no match on that day.
Upon receiving this unexpected outcome, Dr. Rodda proceeded to investigate further, directing questions towards the Women’s Super League.
“Out of interest, I asked Alexa about Arsenal’s upcoming game in October. While information on the men’s team was available, no response was provided when specifically enquiring about women’s fixtures,” Dr. Rodda recounted.
The BBC replicated the same query and obtained results consistent with Dr. Rodda’s experience.
Responding promptly to the allegations, Amazon acknowledged the incident as an error that has since been rectified. A representative from the retail giant clarified that Alexa sources information from a variety of platforms including Amazon, licensed content providers, and websites in response to user inquiries.
Moreover, Alexa leverages AI-driven automated systems to grasp question contexts and furnish pertinent details. Amazon explained that in this instance, the automated systems made a mistake but will likely improve with time.
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