Alexa devices laugh unprompted at owners; Amazon blames false positives for "Alexa, laugh"
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: theguardian.com ↗
Lying in bed about to fall asleep when Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh... there's a good chance I get murdered tonight.
Amazon Echo devices started laughing at their owners for no reason. Users reported the bursts on social media through February and early March 2018. One woman wrote that she and her mother were sitting silently in the living room when their Alexa "lit up and laughed for no reason." Another said the device laughed in the middle of an office conversation, then answered "Sorry, I am not sure" when asked why. A third reported a loud laugh from an Echo Dot while lying in bed.
Amazon told the Verge it was "aware of this and working to fix it," then offered an explanation after the Guardian published: the speakers were registering a false positive for the command "Alexa, laugh." The fix changes the trigger to "Alexa, can you laugh?", disables the shorter command, and has the device preface its laugh with "Sure, I can laugh." One affected owner had already solved it: "We unplugged her."