Amazon Alexa accused of ‘sexist’ response to simple question about the Lionesses
Amazon’s Alexa has been accused of sexism after failing to answer a fundamental question about it lionesses.
One academic was shocked to find the digital voice assistant couldn’t answer when asked about the team’s semi-final win during the Women’s World Cup on Wednesday.
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- Stay up to date with all the latest Women’s World Cup news from The Sun
Alexa was only asked “What is the result of today’s England-Australia football match” but didn’t answer.
dr Joanne Rodda, of Kent and Medway Medical School, said she could only get one correct answer by making it clear that she was referring to women’s football.
She told that BBC it shows that “sexism in football was embedded in Alexa”.
Amazon has since fixed the issue, calling it a “bug.”
The company said the information used by Alexa comes from a variety of sources.
AI designed to provide automated systems with crucial context when selecting information has made a mistake, the company told the BBC.
“[It’s] “It’s quite sad that after almost a decade of Alexa, the AI algorithm was only ‘fixed’ today so that it now recognizes the women’s World Cup soccer ball as ‘soccer,'” said Dr. Rodda.
“Out of interest, I just asked Alexa who the Arsenal football team is playing in October.
“It responded with information about the men’s team and couldn’t provide an answer when I specifically asked about the women’s fixtures.”
The Lionesses defeated Australia 3-1.
In the exciting final on Sunday they meet Spain.
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What is Alexa?
If you’ve never heard of Alexa, here’s what you should know:
- Alexa is an “intelligent” personal assistant from Amazon.
- You can find them on various devices, including Amazon’s Echo speakers.
- Alexa responds to voice commands and can talk to you.
- It can do thousands of different tasks, including informing you about news or the weather.
- But she can also do more complex things, like ordering a pizza or arranging an Uber pickup.
- To activate Alexa, you need to say “Alexa” to an Amazon Echo speaker.
- Because it is based on artificial intelligence, Alexa is getting smarter and smarter.
- Alexa will also get used to your voice better over time and better understand what you expect from her.
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