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

TL;DR

This study investigates how Amazon Alexa's unmoderated COVID-19 vaccine information can be manipulated by malicious skills, influencing user perceptions and vaccine hesitancy, highlighting the need for moderation solutions.

Contribution

It reveals the vulnerability of voice assistants to misinformation through third-party skills and demonstrates the impact on user perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines.

Findings

Malicious skills can decrease perceived vaccine information accuracy.

Vaccine-hesitant users are influenced by negative rephrasing.

Soft moderation could mitigate misinformation effects.

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.