Say What Now? Amazon’s Alexa Told a 10-Year-Old Girl to Put Penny on Live Plug As Part of a ‘Challenge’

BY: Denver Sean

Published 3 years ago

It sounds like the A.I. Apocalypse is upon us — and Alexa just might be leading the charge.

A 10-year-old girl asked her Amazon Echo device for a “challenge to do,” and the digital assistant suggested that she take a penny and put it on the prongs of a live plug.

via Complex:

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“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” Alexa replied to the girl. 

Kristin Livdahl, who is the girl’s mother, talked about the concerning incident on Twitter.

“We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one,” the girl’s mother said, per the BBC.

Luckily, Livdahl said that her daughter didn’t go through with the dangerous challenge as she’s “too smart to do something like that.” The outlet reports that the “penny challenge” has been circulating on TikTok and pointed out that partaking in it can result in electric shocks, fires, and injury.

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In a statement provided to the BBC, Amazon said that an update was rolled out to fix the problem. 

“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. “As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”

Siri would never!

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