Amazon launched a probe Friday after a group of British lawmakers accused Alexa, its virtual assistant, of peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the UK's Times reports.
A group of lawmakers with the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism sent a letter to the company earlier this week saying it was "appalled" with some of Alexa's answers to questions about Jews.
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The virtual assistant was found to be choosing some less-than-trustworthy sources and very peculiar quotes to deliver blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, they charged.
When asked if Jews happened to control the media, Alexa declared that, according to the so-called Jew Watch, they controlled not just the media, but also "the world's financial systems."
This response was directly citing a Wikipedia article about the Jew Watch, an anti-Semitic Web portal.
Another example cited by the lawmakers saw Alexa take on the question of whether the Holocaust was a hoax, to which the assistant replied with a quote from another article, saying that Holocaust deniers claim it is either a hoax or a historic distortion.
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When delivering the response, the assistant appeared to omit a warning from the same article that these claims were false. According to the lawmakers, Alexa also made a reference to the infamous 'Protocols of Elders of Zion' in one of her other responses.
The company vowed to block some of Alexa's responses as it looks into the situation.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
