Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to put penny in plug socket

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.

The suggestion came after the girl 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.

Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it.

The girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl, described the incident on Twitter.

She said: "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."

That's when the Echo speaker suggested partaking in the challenge that it had "found on the web".

The dangerous activity, known as "the penny challenge", began circulating on TikTok and other social media websites about a year ago.

Many metals conduct electricity and inserting them into live electrical sockets can cause electric shocks, fires and other damage.

"I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms," Michael Clusker, station manager at Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire in 2020.

"The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt."

Fire officials in the US have also spoken out against the so-called challenge.

Ms Livdahl tweeted that she intervened, yelling: "No, Alexa, no!"

However, she said her daughter was "too smart to do something like that".

Amazon told the BBC in a statement that it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant recommending such activity in the future.

"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.

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

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny

Amazon has fixed its voice assistant so that it will not suggest the dangerous “challenge” again.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[feral cat #6385]

People should never have allowed these fucking things into their homes. Like the government needs more help to spy on you, why the fuck would you pay money to help them do so?

I like controlling everything in my house without moving. The phone and TV already spy on me. Might as well have something that spies on me do something useful.

Well, maybe rather than allow your robot nanny to supervise your kid, you get her a book of playing ideas. Or - God forbid - actually play with your kid.

If your 10 year old is stupid enough to electrocute themselves, they deserve it

That being said, a lot of these “challenges” like this and the Tide Pod challenge are clearly malicious assholes trying to hurt people, and just because the people falling for it are idiots, doesn’t mean the people originating these “challenges” shouldn’t be getting in trouble.

Too bad the fucking thing didn't tell the kid to how to make really cool crystals.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

How do you even die from holding your breath?? I was under the impression that, once you've held your breath for long enough to pass out, you begin to breathe again while you are unconscious.

I don't think it's even possible to hold your breath until you lose consciousness to begin with. At some point your autonomic responses will force your diaphragm to move no matter what you do.

When my dipshit friends used to do this twenty years ago, they'd either have a friend choke them out against a wall so we could catch them before they hit the ground, or they'd use a looped fabric towel dispenser in public bathrooms. Come to think of it, I haven't seen one of those since that time, since a few kids died in Canada during that fad.

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

It just wanted to get rid of the brat.

"Alexa, what's something to do?"

Alexa: "KYS"

 

[Hollywood Hitler]

The machines are trying to save us from ourselves.

 

[Pissmaster]

Imagine being so worthless that you need to talk to your robots rather than pushing buttons

 

[Hellspawn]

All the more reason for the family to avoid smart tech.

Or the Internet. Gosh, raising kids will be monumentally difficult.

 

[Glowie Hunter Art Bell]

People who do this shit are the same ones who use the very first search result on google for everything

The govt doesnt need to 1984 us, because between the internet and media, its already done.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

I don't think it's even possible to hold your breath until you lose consciousness to begin with. At some point your autonomic responses will force your diaphragm to move no matter what you do.

When my dipshit friends used to do this twenty years ago, they'd either have a friend choke them out against a wall so we could catch them before they hit the ground, or they'd use a looped fabric towel dispenser in public bathrooms. Come to think of it, I haven't seen one of those since that time, since a few kids died in Canada during that fad.

Actually you can hold your breath til you pass out by tensing up like when you shit and holding that in your ab region as tight as you can. Your face will turn purple and you’ll pass out. I used to know some guys that would do it to get a short high. The trick is to practice until you can stop just right before you would pass out but not before you get right on that edge. Once you finally do breathe your body gives you this incredible feeling of elation.

 

[keyboredsm4shthe2nd]

Alexa should be blocked from accessing anything that originated on TikTok.

https://people.com/human-interest/10-year-old-girl-dies-trying-blackout-challenge-from-tiktok/



Your 10 year old should not be watching TikTok. Give them a ball and tell them to go outside.

There was a girl who died from the chubby bunny challenge too. Her mom was on Oprah talking about it. And that way way before TikTok. I think it might have been before Youtube. So it's not like these challenges are new. But TikTok has made it worse by making all of these retarded ways to kill yourself even more accessible to kids. At least this girl's mother was with her. Not all parents supervise their kids interacting with the internet.



It looks like mom and the kid were playing games with Alexa and mom immediately told Alexa to stop when she suggested TikTok challenge retardation.

It makes me wonder though how many similar incidents have occurred before Amazon fixed it. Your kid shouldn't be babysat by Alexa and I'm surprised they don't have a cartoony version in the shape of a bear or something to watch your kids all day. Give it time.

How tf do you hold your breath long enough to kill yourself, you start breathing immediately after you pass out. It's called the choking game, it's been around since probably at least the fucking 80's, and most kids died because they were doing it with belts.

 

[Dysnomia]

Too late...

Embodied Moxie

Pasadena-based robotics company Embodied has unveiled Moxie, a fun, safe and engaging animate companion for children. Read more on urdesign: https://www.urde...

www.youtube.com

It's like that Black Mirror episode with Hannah Montana.

Those parents aren't even parenting. They just leave the kid with the robot.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

When you pinch Wendy's pussy they pinch back

 

[TowinKarz]

"Alexa, what's the cheapest way I could make my parents mad at me?"

 

[Duke Nukem]

At the rate the world is going, I'm not particularly surprised that people are asking Alexa for suicide advice. One can only handle so much Clown World.