Users of Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa-powered devices will soon be able to make donations to presidential candidates through a new feature called Alexa Political Contributions.

Open to all candidates currently running, the service does require a candidate to sign up to the service with Amazon noting that the onboarding “is simple and doesn’t require any technical experience.” Candidates are required to provide general information about their campaign and sign up for an Amazon Payments Merchant account.

Once the service goes live in October, Alexa users can donate a maximum of $200 to a candidate by using the simple phrase “Alexa, donate to [candidate name].”

In a blog post, Amazon said that the idea for the service came during the 2018 midterm elections when the company saw a spike in election-related questions, such as when the polls open or who’s winning in certain states.

In addition to the donation ability, Amazon pitched Alexa’s usefulness in providing election information, claiming that Alexa is “an objective source.”

“We aim to provide the most relevant, accurate, and timely information about elections and candidates,” Amazon said. “We federate across hundreds of information sources, and we collaborate with nonpartisan organizations to provide customers with information on polls, ballots, results and more. Alexa herself does not have opinions on politics or candidates.”

The new service raised concerns among some observers. Tim Mackey, principal security strategist at the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center, told SiliconANGLE that it’s concerning because of the potential for the devices to be activated in error.

“For the 2018 Super Bowl ad cycle, Amazon was able to configure Alexa to avoid being activated as it ran its Super Bowl ads – a process which will need to be replicated within any potential political ads candidates might run,” Mackey explained. “The goal, of course, being to ensure that an unscrupulous ad doesn’t trigger spurious donations to targeted campaigns.”

But he noted that once those protections against mistaken activation are in place, the challenge then becomes tracking whether contributions are being made according to federal election guidelines. Contributions are limited for individuals, are typically restricted to those over the age of 18, must be made voluntarily from funds controlled by the individual, and the individual must not be a foreign national, he said.

“Campaigns receiving donations are also required to report all contributions, including identifying the individual,” Mackey added. “Given digital assistants can typically be activated by multiple users, identifying the individual user for elections compliance will be challenging.”

Photo: BestAI Assistant