Amazon's shopping bot may bury US-made goods, two senators told the FTC.
Two senators, Tammy Baldwin and Rick Scott, wrote to the Federal Trade Commission about Amazon's Alexa for Shopping and Walmart's Sparky, Reuters reported.
Their letter says the assistants may suppress information about American-made products while providing origin data for goods made elsewhere. It also says they may fail to flag falsely labelled "Made in USA" goods.
The letter relies on a study by a think tank led by former FTC chair Lina Khan. Asked why there is no Made in USA filter, Alexa replied, according to the letter, that one would "redirect significant sales away from their largest seller base".
Amazon rejects the claim. "The suggestion that we intentionally withhold country-of-origin information from customers is fundamentally wrong," a spokesperson told Reuters.
Walmart did not immediately respond. The FTC declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported the letter. The letter is a request, and the FTC has not said whether it will act.
A chatbot's account of its own business rules is now quoted in a letter to a regulator, true or not.
What would your customer-facing agent say if someone asked it why it recommends what it recommends?
Sources
Our file on Amazon
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