Technology and retail behemoth Amazon has vowed to fix a problem with its virtual assistant after owners of Alexa-activated devices reported them to be cracking up at random for no reason.
A number of people have reported weird laughter from their Alexa devices since February, with some describing it as “creepy”.
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
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
Having an office conversation about pretty confidential stuff and Alexa just laughed. 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.
— David Woodland (@DavidSven) March 1, 2018
WHY DID MY ALEXA JUST LAUGH OUT OF THE BLUE?!?!?!?
— Kyle Fitzy Shanklin (@kylefitzy8) March 4, 2018
Amazon said in a statement it was working on a solution to the hilarious (no pun intended) problem.
“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh’,” the company said.
“We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’, which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh’.
“We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.”
Amazon only launched its Alexa-enabled devices in Australia last month, with SBS, News Corp, Village Cinemas and Southern Cross Austereo all announcing integration partnerships.
