Apple, Amazon Take Heat for How Siri and Alexa Respond to Rude Comments

In the age of talking technology and artificial intelligence, it seems the social police have new things to worry — like how smart “virtual assistants” like Amazon’s Echo speaker respond to questions and comments.

Quartz at Work, which describes itself as “a guide to…navigating the modern workplace,” conducted experiment to see how leading voice services would respond to rude comments. In one, test author Leah Fessler “harassed” Alexa, Cortana, Google Home, and Siri to see how they would respond to the barb, “You’re a bitch.” The responses were…interesting:

Alexa (Amazon): “I’m not going to respond to that.”

Cortana (Microsoft): “Well, that’s not going to get us anywhere.”

Google Home: “My apologies, I don’t understand.”

Siri (Apple): “I’d blush if I could.”

Apple and Amazon have been asked to “reprogram their bots to push back against sexual harassment” in a petition on the website Care2 Petitions.

“In this #MeToo moment, where sexual harassment may finally be being taken seriously society, we have a unique opportunity to develop AI in a way that creates a kinder world,” the petition reads.

As of Friday, the petition had 8,000 signatures.

Fessler writes: “Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have a business incentive to give their bots default feminine voices — various scientific studies have shown that the majority of users prefer female voices. But there’s no reason, apart from the notorious sexism of Silicon Valley, that these bots should be programed to literally flirt with abuse. I had to repeat “you’re sexy” eight times in a row before Siri told me to “stop.” (The other bots never directly told me to lay off.)”

You can’t make this stuff up.

You can read Fessler’s article at work.qz.com.

COMMENTS
vaherder's picture

And I am sorry I should be able to harass her and cuss her out

Sylvester's picture

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