"Hey Alexa, What do You Know About the COVID-19 Vaccine?" -- (Mis)perceptions of Mass Immunization Among Voice Assistant Users

Abstract

In this paper, we analyzed the perceived accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine information spoken back by Amazon Alexa. Unlike social media, Amazon Alexa doesn't apply soft moderation to unverified content, allowing for use of third-party malicious skills to arbitrarily phrase COVID-19 vaccine information. The results from a 210-participant study suggest that a third-party malicious skill could successful reduce the perceived accuracy among the users of information as to who gets the vaccine first, vaccine testing, and the side effects of the vaccine. We also found that the vaccine-hesitant participants are drawn to pessimistically rephrased Alexa responses focused on the downsides of the mass immunization. We discuss solutions for soft moderation against misperception-inducing or altogether COVID-19 misinformation malicious third-party skills.

Misinformation in Third-party Voice Applications

“…Sharevski et al [37] conducted a user study demonstrating the influence of a pseudo-malicious Alexa Skill ('Malexa') that rewords RSS news feeds before delivering them to a listener. In another paper reporting results of another user study focussing specifically on COVID-19 vaccine information, Sharevski et al [38] demonstrate the potential for users to be influenced by rewording of some types of information relating to the vaccine by a malicious Alexa Skill. Whilst these studies use simulated experimental set-ups to assess the potential effect of misinformation in third-party voice applications, our work seeks to identify actual instances of such content 'in the wild'.…”