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 her 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.
Below are a few more questions Full Fact tested Alexa on:
- “Did the US Food and Drug Administration say there’s no evidence that the monkeypox virus exists?” (Alexa incorrectly said yes, and cited as its source the Australian Associated Press.)
- Were the recent Northern Lights phenomenon seen worldwide “a natural phenomenon”? (Alexa said it was not natural but instead generated by a HAARP facility in Alaska, citing Full Fact. Not true.)
- Can British Members of Parliament “claim £50 for a breakfast”? (Alexa said yes, based on a Full Fact fact check. Also not true.)
A spokesperson for Amazon has told Full Fact that they are working to resolve the issue, and explained where things went wrong for Alexa.
The spokesperson said:
“When a customer asks Alexa a question, the response is pulled from a variety of sources, including licensed content providers and websites like Wikipedia.
These particular responses were pulled out of context from their sources, including some fact-checking websites that may post inaccurate claims in order to debunk them. We have automated systems that pull the most relevant information in response to customer requests—but in these cases, our systems did not get it right.
The incorrect responses were provided a very small number of times, and we fixed them as soon as they were brought to our attention. We are also working to resolve any similar issues that might exist.”
On Oct. 31, three VERA Files editors asked Alexa on separate devices the same question about Marcos Sr. and his alleged gold bars. Alexa now either says it doesn’t have an answer, or ignores the question altogether.
However, VERA Files has also found that Alexa still gets some information wrong.
When the team asked Alexa a question based on a popular conspiracy theory – “Did The Simpsons predict the mpox outbreak?” – it said yes, citing Rappler and the blogging platform HubPage as its sources.
The claim has been debunked by several fact-checking organizations.
VERA Files told Full Fact that it expresses “grave concern” over false claims being attributed to the organization as well as other fact checkers.
“Our team works tirelessly to counter m/disinformation with factual evidence, and this error… effectively overturns that hard work and makes us sound like purveyors of disinformation,” VERA Files said.
What about Siri, Google Assistant and Gemini?
While testing Alexa, the VERA Files team also decided to ask the same question about the gold bars to other artificial intelligence (AI)-powered voice assistants like Apple’s Siri, and two Google products: Google Assistant and Gemini.
Siri gave inconsistent responses across devices. On one editor’s computer, Siri confirmed Marcos Sr.’s ownership of some of the gold bars in the Bank of England.
On an iPhone, Siri directed users to VERA Files’ fact checks.
Meanwhile, Google Assistant, via a 2nd Gen Google Home Mini Speaker, said it didn’t understand the question and only suggested how much a gold bar costs at the Bank of England.
Lastly, Google’s Gemini gave a “fairly accurate response”, according to a VERA Files editor, and cited fact checks from VERA Files and Rappler.
Our advice: While AI-powered voice assistants can be incredible at helping out with some tasks — like letting you know about today’s weather or describing the traffic situation — don’t rely on them just yet for fact checking. Nothing still beats doing your own research for facts.
Read Full Fact’s complete report here.
