Amazon's Hidden Chatbot Recommends Nazi Books and Lies About Amazon Working Conditions

An Amazon chatbot that’s supposed to surface useful information from customer reviews of specific products will also recommend a variety of racist books, lie about working conditions at Amazon, and write a cover letter for a job application with entirely made up work experience when asked, 404 Media has found. 

This AI-powered chatbot is called “Ask about this product” and is hidden in plain sight on the Amazon mobile app above the customer reviews of most (but not all) products. It exists to help you search customer reviews written by real people, to generate answers about products when the customer reviews do not suffice, and to recommend other products to you.

But in practice it is just a normal chatbot that does regular chatbot things, as was discovered by a Twitter user called Cake. I was only able to make the chatbot appear within the Amazon app and only when I was logged into an account. It did not appear on the desktop site though your mileage may vary.