A child in Yorkshire, UK was was nearly electrocuted this week after receiving a misleading instruction from Amazon Alexa, according to her mother Kristin Livdahl.
The young child asked the Alexa voice assistant to give a “challenge to do,” according to BBC.com. Taking from a trending TikTok challenge online–“the penny challenge”–Alexa advised the child to touch a penny to the exposed, metal prongs between a half-inserted phone plug and an electrical outlet.
According to tweets from the mother of the child, she supposedly overheard Alexa’s instruction, responding with “No, Alexa, no!” to prevent her child from making an error
However, she felt her child knew better anyway, tweeting her daughter is “too smart to do something like that.”
Following the delivery of the proposed ‘challenge,’ Kristin took to Twitter to report and complain about the issue. Amazon has since responded, claiming that it has updated Alexa so that it will no longer recommend this challenge.
It’s likely that Alexa was simply pulling information from the web, and simply lacks the necessary abilities to judge whether or not the information is safe and worthy of serving up.
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Like many other recent dangerous trends, the so-called penny challenge gained popularity on social media platforms like TikTok.
Inserting a penny or other metal objects into a power outlet or making contact with something that’s plugged in could lead to electrocution, sparks, fires, or damage to the electrical wiring. Needless to say, it isn’t something anyone should attempt, and hopefully no one else has received the suggestion and actually carried it out.