‘Creepy’: Amazon’s Alexa is randomly laughing at users, freaking them out a little
Amazon confirmed that in rare circumstances, the voice assistant can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh’
Several people who own Amazon’s Echo speakers have reported a strange bug: the Alexa voice assistant has been laughing for no reason.
Some users on Twitter and Reddit say the outbursts have been entirely spontaneous. Others have said that Alexa has laughed after being asked to turn on the lights – and may have misheard the command.
Twitter user @CaptHandlebar reported spontaneous laughter on February 22.
“So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. Freaked @SnootyJuicer and I out. I thought a kid was laughing behind me.”
So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. Freaked @SnootyJuicer and I out. I thought a kid was laughing behind me. pic.twitter.com/6dblzkiQHp— CaptHandlebar (@CaptHandlebar) February 23, 2018
“Having an office conversation about pretty confidential stuff and Alexa just laughed,” Twitter user @DavidSvenwrote recently.
“Anybody else ever have that? It didn’t chime as if we had accidentally triggered her to wake. She simply just laughed. It was really creepy.”
@amazonecho alone in the dark kitchen, with no trigger, a sudden creepy laugh emerges and freaks out owners #justwrong. Replay: pic.twitter.com/vR684u8mbN— anne (@anniebonannieTN) February 21, 2018
Said another Twitter user, @taylorkatelynne: “[So] my mom & I are just sitting in the living room, neither of us said a word & our Alexa lit up and laughed for no reason. she didn’t even say anything, just laughed. we unplugged her.”
Amazon said in a statement that the outbursts are due to its smart speakers hearing accidental orders. “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,’” Amazon said. To fix the issue, Amazon is disabling that command and changing the trigger phrase to “Alexa, can you laugh?”
Amazon is also changing Alexa’s response to that command: rather than have the assistant laugh right away, its cackling will be preceded by the sentence, “Sure, I can laugh.”
It did not say how many people have been affected. Amazon did not say why the speaker would laugh when no one is talking.
This is not the first problem Alexa has had. Some Echo users reported last week that the voice assistant was down for several hours, drawing comparisons to Amazon’s Super Bowl commercial, in which the assistant lost its voice.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
