Alexa is not infallible, and she recommended a dangerous challenge to a minor that could have endangered her life.
Amazon Alexa is one of the most popular voice assistants on the market, and thanks to it the customer can have the information they want, but also recommendations, jokes and even challenges to meet.
Although an adult is aware that it is simply an AI that tracks information on the Internet, it is likely that many minors can believe everything that an assistant like Amazon’s can say, and that can be potentially dangerous if not information is well curated.
And recently a case has become viral that leaves the voice assistant Alexa in a very bad place because she extracted from the web a macabre challenge that she ended up recommending to a 10-year-old girl.
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 26, 2021
This challenge went viral on TikTok last year, and it basically involves partially inserting the plug of a mobile charger into an electrical outlet and then sliding a coin down the wall to the exposed ends, in many cases causing sparks, electrical system damage but also fires.
And unfortunately Amazon’s Alexa picked up this challenge in her internet search and proposed it to a 10-year-old girl, just as her mother put it. Kristin Livdahk On twitter.
Hi there. We’re sorry to hear this! Please reach out to us directly via the following link so that we can look into this further with you: https://t.co/YlLYrTtGzy. We hope this helps. -Daragh
– Amazon Help (@AmazonHelp) December 27, 2021
Immediately afterwards Amazon Help intervened on the issue, inviting the mother to provide more information on the matter.
Given the controversy spilled on social networks, Amazon itself has issued a statement to the medium Indy100 where he has stated that “Customer trust is at the core of everything we do and Alexa is designed to deliver accurate, relevant and useful information to customers. As soon as we became aware of this error, we took quick action to fix it“.
Alexa pulled the information from an original site post ourcommunitynow.com posted in January 2020, and which was talking about this dangerous TikTok trend.