A 10-year-old in the US was asked to do a dangerous challenge that could’ve proven to be deadly for her.
A shocking incident has surfaced online that is especially worrisome for those who have children in their families who access Amazon’s smart speaker Alexa Echo for asking questions, playing music, or just to play around with. This is also a concerning incident for parents who trust other types of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with their kids. A 10-year-old in the US was asked to do a dangerous challenge that could’ve proven to be deadly for her.
The girl’s mother posted screenshots of her family’s Alexa activity history which showed that Alexa told the child to touch a penny to the exposed prongs of a phone charger plugged into the wall. This could have killed the girl if she got an electric shock. “OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said,” the girl’s mother said in her tweet along with the screenshot.
The smart device seems to have pulled the idea for the challenge from an article describing it as dangerous, citing news reports about an alleged challenge trending on TikTok.
According to Kristin Livdahl’s screenshot, the Echo responded to “tell me a challenge to do” with “Here’s something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com: The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.”
Amazon confirmed Alexa’s behavior in a statement to the BBC. The company said, “As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”
Kristin tweeted on December 27 that asking for a challenge was no longer working.
