Amazon’s Alexa Assistant Told a Child to Do Something that Could Have Been Deadly

In an alarming story, a 10-year old child could have had a lethal fate if it had listened to what an Amazon Alexa told it to do.

According to Kristin Livdahl, the girl’s mother who reportedly lives in the U.S., described the incident in a tweet over the weekend.

An Echo smart speaker gave a suggestion to Livdahl’s daughter when she had asked Alexa for a “challenge to do.”

“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” Alexa replied.

The potentially lethal challenge had started appearing on social media platforms including TikTok around a year ago.

“We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier,” Livdahl wrote in another tweet.

“Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”

It was then that Alexa suggested the girl attempt the challenge that it had “found on the web.” Alexa pulled the challenge from an online news publication called Our Community Now.

“I was right there when it happened and we had another good conversation about not trusting anything from the internet or Alexa,” the mother said.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday that the error had been fixed.

“Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers,” the Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.