Aaaaaaand this makes me glad I never invested in an Alexa of my own.
I’ve heard bad horror stories of Furbies waking up in the middle of the night and saying creepy stuff, but I figured I’d just leave that in 1998. Now, Alexa is the new Furby in the sense that she has a “glitch,” which causes her to unexpectedly LAUGH, and it’s freaking people out.
People have reported imprompted laughter from Alexa, from being in the same room with it to waking them up in the middle of the night, and it’s affecting hundreds of Alexa owners!
For days, Amazon said they were aware of the issue, but just today they discovered the problem. They told NY Times:
“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,’” when other words are spoken, Amazon said in an emailed statement. “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.’”
I don’t hear anything close to the word “laugh” by looking at these videos, but that’s just me!
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?
— David Woodland (@DavidSven) March 1, 2018
It didn't chime as if we had accidentally triggered her to wake. She simply just laughed. It was really creepy.
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.
— taylor wade (@taylorkatelynne) March 5, 2018
we unplugged her.
There was a random female laugh in my apartment... Its only me and my housemate home... He's a guy. Either Alexa is now self aware or we have a ghost... This might be my last tweet.
— Cameron Trout (@CamT_26) March 5, 2018
