False positive freaking people out
Amazon’s Alexa is well-known for funny Easter eggs and hidden features, but it seems her latest skill has taken the company by surprise.
Users have taken to social media to report Alexa suddenly and unexpectedly uttering a “very loud and creepy laugh”, without being woken with a command.
And Amazon confirmed to The Verge that it was “aware of this and working to fix it.”
The first was back on 22 February, but more reports have surfaced in the last week, including the below tweet.
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.
— Gavin Hightower (@GavinHightower) February 26, 2018
Since the initial flurry of reports yesterday, Amazon has expanded slightly on the probable cause – suggesting that a false positive was being picked up for the command “Alexa, laugh”. The Guardian reports that the command will now change to “Alexa, can you laugh”, killing the shorter command, and reducing the likelihood of a false positive.
It’s either that, or Alexa is finally becoming sentient – developing a sense of humour and, soon enough, will kill us all in our sleep. Either way, it’s good that Amazon is working on a fix.
