Amazon pulls plug on 'creepy' Alexa laughter issue
Amazon has issued an urgent update to its Echo speaker after its voice-powered assistant Alexa developed a glitch which caused it to randomly erupt into fits of laughter.
Amazon pulls the plug on maniacal Alexa laugh
Unamused customers were quick to voice complaints about the rogue speakers after being freaked out by the unsolicited response, including some woken in the middle of the night and others caught off guard while watching TV.
Many took to social media to laugh off the incident but addressing the issue Amazon admitted that in "rare circumstances" its speaker may pick up a "false positive" for the command "Alexa, laugh", prompting it into the bizarre behavior.
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
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
In an effort to prevent future bouts of controversy Amazon has changed this trigger command to the lengthier, ‘Alexa, can you laugh’, reducing the likelihood of it mishearing future commands.
Alexa’s latest glitch follows an incident last week in which a widespread outage saw the device become unresponsive.