Amazon's Alexa tells 10-year-old to try deadly ‘outlet challenge’ that can electrocute person

Amazon’s virtual voice assistant Alexa has been a hit around the globe due to its extreme utility. The voice companion can be found on Amazon’s Echo devices as well as its Fire TV devices. However, the popular voice assistant was recently found suggesting a 10-year-old girl a potentially fatal challenge that it sourced out of the internet.

The incident surfaced when Twitter user Kristin Livdahl revealed that her 10-year-old girl asked Echo smart speaker for a “challenge to do”.

The device replied suggesting a dangerous challenge where live plugs are to be touched with a coin. Alexa reportedly said, “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.”

OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said. pic.twitter.com/HgGgrLbdS8

— Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 26, 2021

The lethal challenge was sourced by the software from a website called ourcommunity.com. The information came out of an article from 2020. Also called the “penny challenge” it was been viral on TikTok and trending at the time.

The mother narrated the entire incident, “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. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”

That was when the Echo speaker made the dangerous suggestion. In her tweet, the mother said that she intervened, shouting at the smart speaker, “No, Alexa, no!”

She, however, did add that her 10-year-old girl was “too smart to do something like that.”

Amazon reportedly said that it had updated Alexa so as to prevent the voice assistant to make such recommendations in the future. BBC reported that Amazon said in a statement, “Customer trust is at the centre 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 took swift action to fix it.”