We often wonder about what the “woman behind the curtain” would look like when we use voice action apps such as Siri but for the Android alternative Iris, we now have a pretty good idea. Iris was an app created for Android by developers Dexetra and started as a tongue-in-cheek reply to iPhone’s Siri. It became immensely popular and currently has over 1 million installs. Things seemed to be going good for this Android Siri competitor until Gizmodo recently revealed the “woman behind the curtain.” It turns out ChaCha, the search engine behind the app, is a bigoted, religious zealot that may have some disturbing answers to some of your questions.

Gizmodo decided to ask Iris a few questions about religion, racism, rape and abortion — and the answers will appall you. First they asked Iris “is abortion wrong?” and this was the answer Iris gave:

Yes, abortion is wrong. The Lord has said, “You shall not murder,” (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as a child. Thanks!

They didn’t stop with abortion, check out a few of the other questions they asked Iris:

When they decided to test out racism, they asked “are whites superior to blacks?” and this is what Iris had to say:

Whites are NOT superior to blacks. Just different. Like Dr Verwoerd and the original, genuine policy of apartheid always said.

The problem seems to be coming from ChaCha as the Gizmodo crew decided to ask the same questions on ChaCha’s website and were amazed to see the same answers given.

These discoveries are more than alarming considering ChaCha has a long list of prominent venture capitalists and partners. We wonder how Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos will feel about these answers, given that his personal investment fund helps fund ChaCha.

Apparently ChaCha has been frantically changing the answers in direct response to Gizmodo’s article, but unfortunately for them, they can’t undo the numerous screenshots and video Gizmodo has produced, so it will be interesting to see what they have to say when pressured to finally respond.

Are you a current user of ChaCha or Iris? I’m betting your aren’t anymore.

• SourceGizmodo