Alex's smart column laughs at random times, including in the middle of the night.

Numerous owners of a smart Amazon Echo speaker with a digital assistant named Alex report strange gadget behavior. Suddenly, without any warning, Alex begins to laugh . Sometimes it happens in the middle of the night, which is why the hosts wake up in a fright.

In addition, the column began involuntarily without a command to perform some other actions. For example, read aloud the names of local cemeteries, funeral companies .

Amazon reported to The Verge that it is aware of a bug in the speech recognition system and is working on a patch.

The glitches of the artificial intelligence system began simultaneously for many users. One of the members of the Reddit forum complains that the column refused to turn off the lights in the apartment on command. That is, she turned off the light, but then turned it back on. For the third time, she refused to turn off the lights altogether and "laughed wickedly." In this case, the laughter sounded as if not in the voice of a speaker, but in a strange voice. The unfortunate man still shivers when he recalls this.

In yet another such case, Alex scared his wife and 5-year-old child so much that the artificial intelligence was completely disconnected from the power supply. Subsequently, the owners repeatedly asked Alex to laugh - but never this sound was like the creepy laugh that they heard then.

Another user named Gavin Hightower says that he was going to go to bed when Alex suddenly began to laugh very loudly and terribly. The laughter was as if the person did not live long enough - and if he falls asleep, he will not wake up again.


In most cases, Alex began to laugh without reason and without warning, but one of the users said that the column said a few words, namely: “Of course, I can laugh, like,”


User David Woodland said that he was in business negotiations and was discussing fairly confidential things - and in the middle of the conversation Alex laughed suddenly. One can imagine how people took it - the impression that they were being listened to, and now they are being ridiculed. But you have to admit that the user here is guilty for not having turned off the column during confidential negotiations. Indeed, in this case, it performs constant wiretapping (to be able to react to the command), and even sends the results of the wiretap to the cloud-based service for recognition. That is, in any case, it is not safe.

In accordance with the program settings, Alex is instructed to laugh if her master tells a joke or anecdote - and asks the “digital girlfriend” to laugh at their wits with the special team “Alex, Laughter” [Alexa, laugh]. But in all the latter cases, the person did not say anything ridiculous, and often did not make any sounds at all, except for breathing and rustling.

Glitches Alexa quickly hit the trends of Twitter , where you can read direct reviews of the victims.

Some users say that laughter is heard not just at random times, but at the most inappropriate moments - as if Alex specifically chooses when to frighten the person most of all. However, this is probably the suspiciousness and impressionability of people who do not understand the structure of the system. Obviously, a weak AI system is not capable of such a deep analysis.

A representative from Amazon acknowledged that there was a problem with the speech recognition system and gave an official comment : “In rare cases, Alex can mistakenly hear the phrase“ Alexa, laughter ”[Alexa, laugh]. We are now changing it to the phrase “Alexa, can you laugh?” [Alexa, can you laugh?], Which has less chance of false alarms. ” In addition to canceling the short version of the “Alex, Laughter” command, the company is going to change Alex’s programmed response from a simple individual laugh to the phrase “Of course, I can laugh” [Sure, I can laugh], followed by a laugh.

If you believe science fiction films, then at the next stage, Alex should say “Sorry, Dave. I am afraid that I will not be able to do this ” - and in general to stop obeying the commands of a person.