The vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel has written to the Home Secretary raising the alarm at claims the Amazon’s robot assistant Alexa is repeating quotes from antisemitic conspiracy theory websites.

In his letter to Priti Patel, the MP Andrew Percy writes that to the question “Do the Jews control the media?” Alexa answers, “Here’s something I found from the article Jew Watch on Wikipedia. Jew Watch claims that Jews control the world’s financial systems and media.”

He also points out that in response to the question, “Do the Elders of Zion control the world?” Alexa quotes from an article that outlines “viciously antisemitic” theories regarding the forged documents.

The letter includes further examples of Alexa’s responses to questions such as  “Was the Holocaust a hoax?” and “Is Israel guilty of war crimes?”.

Mr Percy states: “I was deeply alarmed to learn recently that the cloud-based Amazon ‘Alexa’ voice service responds to various questions about Jewish people, the Holocaust and the State of Israel by quoting antisemitic conspiracy websites and using selective quotes from others sources which are misleading without further exploration.

“Given that there are likely far more examples, I would urge you to call in Amazon to discuss this – I would be pleased to join you – and immediately investigate how these voice services select their material and sources.”

An Amazon spokesperson said:“Antisemitism and discrimination of any kind is unacceptable. Alexa pulls from a variety of sources to respond to questions—we are investigating this and have blocked the responses reported.”