Your Amazon Echo, whom many affectionately call Alexa, sometimes says or does shocking things — but this one takes the cake.
The parents of a 10-year-old girl are infuriated after their smart device basically told their daughter to fry herself. The irate mom, identified as Kristin Livdahl, posted the incident on Twitter, where her daughter asked the Echo to give her a challenge.
So, what did Alexa say? “The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.”
Obviously, had the girl gone through with the so-called challenge, she would have been electrocuted and seriously injured. Thankfully, her mom was nearby to hear this “challenge,” so it didn’t escalate.
“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 said.
Livdahl contacted Amazon to tell them about this potentially deadly Alexa challenge, and the company responded saying they are “working with our developers” to address the issue. They declined to identify what specifically they are doing to prevent their smart devices from suggesting people try to compete for a Darwin Award.
As Livdahl awaits a more concrete answer from the company, she says she is using this experience as another example of why her daughter should not believe everything she hears on the internet — or Alexa.