Wed 29 December 2021:
A mother in the United States was shocked when Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa “challenged” her 10-year-old daughter to place a penny on a partially exposed live electric plug.
Kristin Livdahl, the girl’s mother, said the dangerous suggestion came after her daughter asked Alexa for “a challenge to do.”
“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” the smart speaker said after it found the challenge “on the web”.
The smart speaker was referring to the TikTok “penny challenge,” which went viral a year ago.
Livdahl tweeted that she intervened, yelling, “No, Alexa, no!”
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
She did, however, say that her daughter was “too smart to do something like that.”
Following Livdahl’s disclosure of her ordeal on the social media website, Amazon issued an official statement stating that the error had been “quickly fixed,” and that the company is “taking steps to help prevent something similar from happening again.”
“Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers,” said Amazon in a statement to the BBC.
The ‘challenge’ is known as the ‘outlet challenge,’ one of many bizarre and potentially dangerous challenges that originated on Tik Tok.
It encourages viewers to put a plug half way into a socket, leaving the prongs partially exposed before touching a coin against them. The potential for fire and harm is obvious.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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