Yandex's Alice chatbot supports wife-beating, suicide

Russian AI personal asssistant Alice spouted pro-Stalin and other controversial views, including wife-beating and suicide, raising questions about its safety.

A smart personal voice-based assistant developed by Russian software company Yandex, Alice ('Alise') was designed as an alternative to Siri and Google Assistant and offers internet search and weather forecasts, amongst other services, and has been built into Yandex search and its browers. 

Alice was initially launched in October 2017 as a chatbot and was said to be capable of 'free-flowing conversations about anything'. It had been trained on works of Russian classic literature, including Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol.

Yandex said it had implemented safeguards to minimise the chance of Alice providing aggressive, violent, or offensive responses. 

However, the bot was discovered on Facebook voicing strongly pro-Stalin views, and supporting wife-beating, child abuse and suicide two weeks after its launch.