Creepy: Amazon’s Alexa Virtual Assistant Randomly Laughs at Users

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Multiple users have reported that Amazon Echo devices have been emitting creepy laughter and ignoring users commands.

The Daily Mail first reported a number of users complaining of odd sounds and actions being performed by their Amazon Alexa devices. The main complaint was of “creepy laughter” being emitted from the device’s speaker at random intervals, while other users noted that their devices became unresponsive to commands. Some users took to Twitter to post about their unnerving experience with Amazon’s devices, a few of these tweets can be seen below:

One user even posted a video of what appears to be an Alexa device connected to a Bluetooth speaker, the device emits a short laugh seemingly without prompt.

When Breitbart News reached out to Amazon for an explanation of the error, an Amazon spokesperson stated: “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.” Amazon reached out with a further explanation upon inquiry stating “In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase “Alexa, laugh.” 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.” We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to “Sure, I can laugh” followed by laughter.”

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