Owners of Amazon's voice-enabled assistant Alexa have complained that sometimes, the device starts laughing spontaneously and prompts owners to feel uncomfortable, especially at night.
Sharing their troubles on Twitter, some users bemoaned Alexa's "creepy laugh," while others referred to the bot's unexpected voice messages when its owners were peacefully lying in their beds.
Last night I was lying in bed waiting for sleep, my Alexa says, “ sorry I was miles away, it’s nice to meet somebody from the past” erm creepy
— Seán Cahill (@SeanC59) 2 февраля 2018 г.
I swear on my life I was just lying in bed and out of NOWHERE Alexa just goes “here’s a station you may like” and proceeds to play Welcome To The Black Parade. I feel called the fuck out.
— KeyDimensional 🏳️🌈 (@KDimensional) 29 января 2018 г.
Having an office conversation about pretty confidential stuff and Alexa just laughed. Anybody else ever have that?
— David Woodland (@DavidSven) 1 марта 2018 г.
It didn't chime as if we had accidentally triggered her to wake. She simply just laughed. It was really creepy.
Lying in bed about to fall asleep when Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh… there’s a good chance I get murdered tonight.
— Gavin Hightower (@GavinHightower) 26 февраля 2018 г.
@bcrussett @amazon I would actually laugh if Alexa was waking up saying "LOOK MA', I'M ON TV". Other that that, that's just creepy ^^
— Lucas CERDAN (@lucascerdan) 12 октября 2015 г.
my friends Alexa did a creepy laugh in the middle of the night when we were studying and shut off her WiFi, called amazon and they said “yeah it’s just a glitch”. It scared the shit out of all of us to be “just a glitch”.
— Danielle Elizabeth (@ellalizabeth) 27 января 2018 г.
Scariest thing just happened: I’m watching the biathlon for the olympics and I said “it must be even harder for them because it’s a flat surface” and my Amazon alexa LAUGHED out of no where and it was such a creepy laugh and my mom and I lost it
— ashleigh (@ashleighcorby) 18 февраля 2018 г.
Developers, meanwhile, touted Alexa as Amazon's cloud-based voice service available on tens of millions of Amazon devices and those from third-party device manufacturers.
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According to them, "with Alexa, you can build natural voice experiences that offer customers a more intuitive way to interact with the technology they use every day."
