An Amazon Alexa voice assistant reportedly ''challenged'' a 10-year-old girl to ''touch a penny to the exposed prongs'' of a half-plugged phone charger, prompting the company to update Alexa to prevent a similar incident, BBC News reports.
Kristin Livdahl, the child's mother, posted on Twitter that she and her daughter ''were doing some physical challenges'' provided by the family's Amazon Echo, which uses the voice assistant technology Alexa. This included lying down ''and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot'' from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier.
Livdahl added that due to ''bad weather outside,'' her daughter ''just wanted another one."
The Echo speaker then suggested a challenge that was ''found on the web,'' an activity known as ''the penny challenge,'' which began appearing on social media sometime last year, according to the BBC.
"Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs," the Echo device said.
Livdahl said in a tweet that she called out ''No, Alexa, no,'' and noted that her daughter is ''too smart to do something like that.''
Amazon said in a statement to the BBC that Alexa has been updated to prevent it from suggesting this challenge again.
"Customer trust is at the center of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers," the company said. "As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.