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Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People (theverge.com)
Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. The Verge: Amazon responded to the creepiness in a statement to The Verge, saying, "We're aware of this and working to fix it." As noted in media reports and a trending Twitter moment, Alexa laughs without being prompted to wake. People on Twitter and Reddit reported that they thought it was an actual person laughing near them, which can be scary when you're home alone. Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices.
You let it in. Alexa^H^H^H^Hmazon is laughing at you.
Imagine being asleep and then woken by a cackling laugh coming from the living room...
-- Cheers!
"Many responded to the cackling sounds by unplugging their Alexa-enabled devices."
I'm with the many that responds to it by never plugging it in in the first place.
But, like the pharaoh and his attempt to beat back the tide, it'll all be for nought as the Marketeers will win.
That being said: I think this is hilarious.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I was listening to TWIT the other day, and one of the panelists (whose name I unfortunately am not recalling) mentioned that he's asked Amazon a couple times whether their devices are tracking speech at times other than when prompted by the word "Alexa" - and they've pointedly not answered.
And for those who dismiss this idea with "you can monitor whether a device is always listening by checking when it's transmitting" - if one were intending to surreptitiously collect or monitor speech, it would be a simple enough matter to collect it on-device but only transmit it when "official" queries occur. It's not as if storing speech requires lots of memory.
#DeleteChrome
Laughing for no reason seems like a very odd bug, do any Alexa users have a hunch what's happening?
For instance, are there situations were Alexa laughs appropriately and this same laugh is getting triggered by random triggers? Is this some poorly thought out Easter egg or a test feature that wasn't correctly disabled?
I suppose a hacker is a possibility as well.
I stole this Sig