Alexa Challenged A Girl To Touch A Live Plug With A Penny & Amazon Says It Was An 'Error'
The speaker brought up an old and dangerous TikTok challenge.
If your smart speaker is telling kids to touch pennies to live wall plugs, is it really that smart?
Amazon says it moved swiftly to patch an "error" with its popular Alexa voice assistant after the AI gave a young girl a dangerous challenge to try at home.
Mom Kristin Livdahl says Alexa told her 10-year-old to try touching a penny to an exposed plug in a wall outlet over the holidays.
"Tell me a challenge to do," the girl said, according to a screenshot of the Alexa activity record, which Livdahl posted on Twitter.
Alexa responded by searching the web for her words and coming back with a dangerous challenge.
"The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," Alexa said. It appeared to be reading from a website that was actually warning people about the challenge.
Livdahl says she didn't let her daughter try the challenge, and that she instead flagged the issue to Amazon.
"As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it," Amazon said in a statement to various outlets, including BBC and Sky News.
"Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers," Amazon said.
Users now say they can't recreate the issue.
The penny challenge sparked concern on TikTok in early 2020, though it has largely died out at this point.
Livdahl says the penny suggestion came up while her family was playing games together over the holidays.
"We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot," she tweeted. Livdahl added that they were passing the time due to bad weather outside and her daughter just wanted another challenge.
She said the whole thing was a good lesson in internet safety and "not trusting things you read without research and verification."
This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.
