A mother was left outraged after her daughter was challenged to touch electrified charger prongs with a penny by Amazon’s Alexa.
As US-based mom Kristin Livdahl revealed, she and her 10-year-old daughter were playing around and doing some fun challenges indoors when they decided to ask Echo voice assistant for some help.
Following the successful completion of a series of physical challenges, the mother and daughter asked Alexa to find them one last task to do for the day only for the assistant to bring up something very dangerous and potentially fatal.
After asking for a “challenge to do,” the AI assistant referred them to a challenge with the following directions: “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.”
Outraged by the suggestion, the mother yelled back at the device saying: “No, Alexa, No!”
Immediately, the mother snapped a screenshot of the dangerous challenge and shared it on Twitter where she wrote: “OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said.”
Ironically, the linked article from which the instructions were automatically pulled actually encouraged parents to stop their children from participating in the challenge.
The furious mother later added: “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.”
The ‘penny challenge’ went viral last year after first appearing on TikTok. Since then, fire officials have frequently slammed the dangerous challenge and suggested it could kill people, especially young children, or cause a fire.
“The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt. Every year there are numbers of people killed by electrical shocks. It can kill you if it gets you right,” fire station manager Michael Clusker explained.
“Anything that interferes with electrical equipment – unless you are a qualified electrician – is very dangerous.”
Previously, firefighters were called to a high school after a teenager dropped a penny on his iPhone charger’s exposed prongs. The aftermath of the stunt could be seen in photos showing a heavily scorched outlet.
Following the recent incident involving Alexa, Amazon has apologized and reassured the people that the assistant was updated to prevent similar suggestions from showing up in the future.
“Customer trust is at the center 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,” the company said.
What are your thoughts on this matter? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to SHARE this post with your family and friends. For more news and stories, follow us on Facebook!