Amazon Working on a Fix for Alexa Devices Scaring Users With Creepy Laughter

[ocnitsa]

WTF even causes that?

As AI gets older it’s sense of seriousness gets more pronounced. Amazon engineered a secret fix to this by throttling back seriousness on aging machines. The laughter is a result of this. Class action suits to follow.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Get these creepy spy devices out of your home. Put phones in a faraday bag at night. Remove / disable smart device crap (they are never “smart”, just slow). Little Snitch/Micro Snitch all the Macs.

Take back your privacy.

A personal device is only one endpoint. What about the data tracked through routers and switches by your ISP?

 

[EM2013]

I’m sure this won’t help ease Elon Musk’s paranoia about the A.I. takeover 😛

 

[gatearray]

Pharmacy didn’t had your refill?

<cue phony Alexa laugh>

 

[fullauto]

Any publicity is good publicity, right?

“We’ve got so many of these things sitting in our warehouses, we need to get rid of them! How do we get more attention? The porn mishap was great exposure!”

“Just make it randomly laugh like a crazy person..”

“Excellent!”

 

[arubinst]

I'm now staring at my echo dot and waiting for the damned thing to laugh... it sure would scare the bejesus out of me 😱

 

[wsbsteven]

I'm going home and burning all of mine tonight.

 

[itsmilo]

Already scares me when it sometimes goes off on its own like „sorry i didnt understand. Please repeat“. Cant inagine a devils laugh on top

 

[Schranke]

I think what you posted make sense and seems likely. Either way, it’s remotely kind of funny to hear some random laugh, but would even be funnier if I could see the expressions on peoples faces when they hear it for the first time.

I would love to see this happen in person, would be hilarious. Just imagine some one just finished a horror film and hear the laugh in another room 😀

Well in that case fair play to them 😀 I'd have a lot more respect for that than people using their skills for cryptolocker crap.

Though I'm sure if this was a prank they'd have made it more like MUUUUHAHAHAHAHHHH

Should it turn out to be a security breach it is in good fun if thats the only thing which had been done.
One of my friends which is a part of a white hat hacker group told me about a security flaw in SONOS which would make something like this possible. We joked a lot about having it randomly playing "never gonna give you up"

 

[Jackmichealkeen]

bet that would freak you out if you was asleep and it happened

 

[Andres Cantu]

You evidently didn't own a HomePod during by the first 2-3 weeks after it was released.

It would occasionally utter unprompted messages as well.

Correct, but that's not as creepy as a random laugh.

 

[dannys1]

Get these creepy spy devices out of your home. Put phones in a faraday bag at night. Remove / disable smart device crap (they are never “smart”, just slow). Little Snitch/Micro Snitch all the Macs.

Take back your privacy.

Where do you recommend we buy foil hats from?

 

[IJ Reilly]

Amazon could just rename the device Chuckie.

Problem solved.

 

[RogerWilco]

Oh gee, just a bug, we'll get right on it... This phony "incident" generated more free publicity than Amazon could buy if it had commissioned an expensive ad campaign featuring Alexa.

 

[SeattleMoose]

Mic in Bezos bedroom? 😱

 

[kazmac]

I suppose it will laugh even harder if I quote HAL 9000 from 2001? *This is scary*

 

[RogerWilco]

I suppose it will laugh even harder if I quote HAL 9000 from 2001? *This is scary*

IIRC, HAL was killed by an angry ape armed with a stick (screwdriver). 😀

 

[shyam09]

Dammit. My Alexa does a "tee hee" laugh...

 

[cuwickliffe]

The key here is to place a HomePod next to laughing Alexa:

Alexa: “Hahaha”
Siri: “Here’s some halal restaurants in your area.”

 

[Gasu E.]

My Alexa doesn't seem to do that creepy laugh. But it does occasionally blurt out: "Nevermore."

 

[OLDCODGER]

Where do you recommend we buy foil hats from?

Make your own - trust no-one!

 

[DeepIn2U]

Siri isn’t smart enough to capitalize on this mishap 😀

It has done so already .. by not doing anything 😉

Man this is seriously creepy! How? Disgruntled former AI tech?

Either way this is a sole reason NOT to have Alexa.

 

[AshleyHredone]

What about Siri? Ask him what the temperature is and if it's below 0-degrees celsius he makes a noise like he's trying to throw up before telling you. Very disconcerting. More so with a hangover, lol.

 

[theluggage]

Make your own - trust no-one!

...sadly, as a result of the Alcan Conspiracy, you can never find proper tin foil, only aluminum foil which has been anodized by secret government mandate so that it is permeable to mind control rays. AluminIum foil is ok, but hard to find in the US.

Meanwhile - great news about Alexa turning evil supercomputer. I had been patiently waiting for Valve to release their GLaDOS-based personal assistant, but maybe now I don’t have to.

In other fake news, Tesla have announced a new in-car voice assistant called Christine.

 

[sracer]

Any publicity is good publicity, right?

“We’ve got so many of these things sitting in our warehouses, we need to get rid of them! How do we get more attention? The porn mishap was great exposure!”

“Just make it randomly laugh like a crazy person..”

“Excellent!”

This. I wouldn't be surprised if this was deliberately done for marketing purposes. Laughing is something that makes it seem more intelligent/human-like. Amazon's explanation will be that it uses some sort of advanced AI engine that just needs a little tweaking.