Amazon had to update its voice assistant Alexa after the device challenged a girl of 10 years in the United States to touch the pins of a plug half inserted to the electrical current with a coin.
The suggestion came after the girl to ask Alexa to give her “a challenge to perform.”
“ Plug a phone charger halfway into a power outlet wall, then tap the exposed pins with a penny , ”the smart speaker said.
Amazon said it fixed the bug as soon as the company noticed.
The girl’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter.
OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said. pic.twitter.com/HgGgrLbdS8
– Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 10, 2021
We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a Phy Ed teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.
– Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 28, 2021
“Before we were doing some physical challenges, like lying down and rolling with one shoe on the foot, from a physical education teacher on YouTube. There was bad weather outside. She just wanted another (challenge) ”, he said.
It was then that the Echo speaker suggested that the girl participate in the challenge that she had“ found on the web ”.
The dangerous activity, known as “the penny challenge”, began circulating on TikTok and other social networks about a year ago .
Many metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live sockets can cause electric shock, fire and other damage.
The girl’s mother said on Twitter that she intervened and shouted: “No, Alexa, no!” And he related that his daughter said that he is “too smart to do something like that.”
I was right there and yelled, No, Alexa, no! ” like it was a dog. My daughter says she is too smart to do something like that anyway.
– Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 26, 2021
Amazon told the BBC in a statement that it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant from recommending such activity in the future.
“Customer trust is at the core of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant and useful information to customers,” Amazon said in a statement.
“As soon as we became aware of this error, we took quick action to fix it”, added the company.
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