Alexa tells a 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

 

 

When a 10-year-old asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”, Alexa challenged her to touch a penny coin to the prongs of a half-inserted live plug.

Amazon has since updated its Alexa voice assistant  the error as soon as the company became aware of it. The girl’s mother, Kristin Livadhi, described the incident on Twitter: “ We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shore on your foot, from a physical education teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.” 

That’s when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had “found on the web”. The dangerous activity known as “ the penny challenge “ began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fire or other serious damage.

“I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms, the outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt” Michael Clusker station manager at Carlisle Fire station told media in 2020.

Ms Livdahi tweeted that she immediately intervened yelling “No Alexa, no!”

Amazon in a statement said “ Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers. As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it”.