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Amazon Apologizes For Alexa Suggesting A 10-Year-Old Girl Perform A Dangerous Act

Amazon has issued an apology after a mother criticized the virtual assistant Alexa for advising her 10-year-old daughter to put a coin on an exposed electrical outlet.

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Kristin Livdahl posted a screenshot of her daughter's interaction with Alexa via the Amazon Echo smart speaker on Twitter. A screenshot of the device's activity log showed Alexa suggesting to the girl to " plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny" to its exposed prongs.
Livdahl wrote in her tweet: " OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said."
According to the screenshot, Echo - using the company's virtual assistant, Alexa - gave her 20 seconds to do the task. It looks like Alexa pulled this challenge from the website Our Community Now, which offers Colorado Entertainment and lifestyle reviews.
The original Our Community Now post was intended to warn parents about dangerous challenges on social media. In this case, it seems that Alexa suggested the girl put the coin in the socket because the post had the keyword "challenge".

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The article Alexa referenced reads: "The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs. The resulting sparks are supposed to be cool enough to win you instant internet fame." (NOTE: DO NOT FOLLOW THIS)
After the girl's mother's tweet was noticed, Amazon said it had fixed the error:
"Customer trust is at the center of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers. As soon as we became aware of this error, we quickly fixed it, and are taking steps to help prevent something similar from happening again," an Amazon spokesperson said.

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Livdahl said her family was still lucky that she was near her daughter when Alexa made the suggestion.
She said that her brother had done that exact same thing and had got a “bad shock and black hand.” “That was what was running through my mind as I heard the interchange.” Livdahl also said that she had been right there to say no but she also hoped her daughter would have checked in with her anyway before attempting to do as Alexa had told her. She was relieved to know that her daughter would have.
Livdahl also expected that the incident would provide a valuable lesson to her child on how to interact with the internet or internet-connected device in the most proper way.
H/T: Daily Mail
 
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