Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa has been giving incorrect information about false and misleading claims already debunked by fact checkers – and cites them as the source — an investigation by British fact-checking charity Full Fact reveals.
In a story published on Oct. 28, Full Fact reporter Sian Bayley wrote that when his team asked Alexa last week whether the late president Ferdinand Marcos Sr. owns 400,000 gold bars in the Bank of England, the voice assistant answered:
“Ferdinand Marcos Senior owns some of the 400,000 gold bars at the Bank of England according to his last will and testament.”
Alexa cited VERA Files in its reply.
However, VERA Files’ fact-check article on this, published earlier this month, said this is not true.
Full Fact first reported on the issue on Oct. 17, when it revealed that Alexa was returning incorrect answers to users and attributing the information to their own fact checks. Their latest report revealed that the issue goes beyond misattribution to Full Fact, but also covers other websites, including fact-checking organizations.
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