Since your racist uncle is not a reliable source, many Americans have turned to Alexa for information about the presidential election. It’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad, but Amazon has taken notice and released new commands for its AI assistant ahead of the next debate. You can now ask questions about the time and channel of the debate, where it’s happening, and afterwards, who won.
Alexa is also getting a host of new commands on election day, November 8th, “to help keep you up to date on all things Election 2016 including who is leading the election, which states the candidates have won and more,” Amazon says. Examples of questions you can pose include “Alexa, who is winning the presidential election,” “who is leading in the presidential polls,” “which percent of the popular vote does Hillary have” and “which states has Trump won.”
Amazon also pointed out some amusing Alexa stats, including the most popular questions. The top four were the ages of each candidate and the latest news around them — with double the number of queries for Trump. The fifth most asked question, weirdly, was “Alexa, who are you voting for?”, just ahead of “Alexa, who should I vote for.” Come on, AI systems don’t have the right to vote yet — you’ll have to wait until at least the next presidential election for that.
