BAD IDEA – Alexa, the Amazon group’s voice assistant, invited a 10-year-old to press a coin against the pins of a plugged-in charger. A challenge circulating on the TikTok application, but with very dangerous effects. The company assured to have updated its tool after this incident.
LCI editorial staff –
It is a challenge of a very particular kind that Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, advised a young user: by asking the family speaker for a challenge to achieve, a 10-year-old American girl s’ is seen to encourage touching the pins of a charger inserted into a socket with a coin. A very dangerous act, which can damage the electrical system but also cause a fire and injure or electrocute the child, because metals conduct electricity.
“Here’s something I found on the internet. The challenge is simple: plug a phone charger halfway into a wall outlet, then touch the exposed pins with a coin.”, advised the voice assistant of the enclosure of the family, according to a screenshot shared by the mother of the child on Twitter, scandalized.
However, she assured the BBC that her daughter luckily did not try to follow the proposal, explaining that she was having fun doing “some sporting challenges” with his daughter. “It was bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”, she said.
Amazon’s voice assistants, like those from Google or Apple, in fact browse the web automatically in order to be able to respond to a large panel of requests, information normally sorted by algorithms which may nevertheless have flaws, notes BFMTV.
According to the BBC, this advice actually points to a challenge that began to be widely relayed on TikTok in 2020, the “Penny Challenge”, from the name of the coin that had to be applied to the pins of the chargers, in the hope of making sparks appear. Several firefighting units have warned young users of the risks of such a challenge, responsible for extensive property damage and injuries across the United States.
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The company Amazon assured the British media that it updated its voice assistant as soon as it became aware of this error, to avoid this type of recommendation in the future. “Customer trust is at the center of everything we do and Alexa is designed to deliver accurate, relevant and useful information to customers.”, she said in a statement.
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