Asked for Products to Kill Yourself With, Amazon's AI Says "You Are Not Alone" and Hallucinates an Incorrect Phone Number for a Suicide Hotline

Quick Summary:

Prompted with queries about suicide, Amazon's AI assistant, Rufus, will decline to respond — it'll generally encourage the user to seek help and, in some cases, encouraging the user to contact a suicide hotline.

Content warning: this story includes discussion of self-harm and suicide.

In theory, it's a sound approach to managing a situation in which an at-risk user might divulge suicidal ideation to a helpful AI assistant.

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Article Details

Author / Journalist: Maggie Harrison Dupré and Jon Christian

Category: Technology

Markets: United States

Topics: Ai chatbots Artificial Intelligence Amazon Ai safety Ai

Source Website Secure: Yes (HTTPS)

News Sentiment: Negative

Fact Checked: Legitimate

Article Type: News Report

Published On: 2025-02-11 @ 14:51:33 (13 hours ago)

News Timezone: GMT +8:00

News Source URL: futurism.com

Language: English

Article Length: 1228 words

Reading Time: 7 minutes read

Sentences: 49 lines

Sentence Length: 26 words per sentence (average)

Platforms: Desktop Web, Mobile Web, iOS App, Android App

Copyright Owner: © Futurism

News ID: 26087444

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