Bored Echo users it was said a few days ago, and when boredom occurs, the idea may arise to ask Amazon’s voice assistant for advice on a new challenge to face. No sooner said than done. The search algorithms are set in motion, rummaging through the information disseminated on the net and find something that can satisfy the request. However, not everything always goes the right way: a 10-year-old girl asked her Echo to find a challenge and Alexa proposed a dangerous one that some time ago had gone viral on TikTok.
To report the fact was Kristin Livdahl, the mother of the child. The answer given by Alexa in fact resumed the introduction of an article published on the Ourcommunitynow.com website which describes what the so-called outlet challenge consists of: a charger is partially connected to the electrical outlet, leaving the poles on which a coin is dropped. To be clear: the effects are downright dangerous, so much so that the site Alexa pulled the text from advised parents to be very careful.
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
After publishing an eloquent message on Twitter, including the screen where you see the response from Alexa, Amazon intervened with an official note.
In short, it was an error that has now been fixed:
Customer trust is at the heart 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 acted quickly to fix it.
Adding more context to those sentences in the article might have allowed Alexa to provide a more constructive and less damaging answer. In fact, it should be emphasized that the description of the challenge is at the beginning of the article ( you can consult it here ) – it occupies exactly the first two lines – while in the remaining part the dangers associated with the challenge are clarified: if you see your children near a taken with a penny in hand, put an end to the joke, it reads. Alexa stopped at the first two lines without taking into account the rest, or in any case, she was unable to assess the danger associated with what she was recommending. A little bit smart in this case.