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Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

theverge.com

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Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#31

Post by RandallBrown »

daveguy wrote: post #30

I expect it is something that Alexa "hears" and that is the specific response. If you say "Alexa laugh" is that the exact sound that comes back? I will check when I get home. Mine is always misunderstanding what I say. So a false activation + misunderstanding would explain this. Also, article says it happens often as a bizarre response to requests to turn of the lights. Maybe "lights" is being interpreted as "laugh"…

The laugh in the article is very different from the laugh I get when I ask Alexa to laugh. She just says "Tee Hee!" after telling you she can laugh.

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#33

Post by andrewmcwatters »

I can't remember where I read it, but I remember a similar article mentioning a very interesting side effect of having decently high-fidelity microphones in these devices. They would pick up noise outside of the range of human hearing and interpret portions of it as a command. It was akin to those articles about the sort of strange phenomenon in machine learning in which computers interpret input wildly differently than humans would due to the underlying modeling the systems are subject to.

My guess is this is in that class of defect.

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#34

Post by prawn »

avarun wrote: post #2

This is one category of bug that's always intrigued me - I can understand unintentional triggers of Alexa occurring (as they did with the Home mini at launch), but why are those triggers resulting in a "creepy laugh"? Is it just that we're only hearing about the unintentional triggers that result in a laugh?

I've never heard ours laugh in any context. Rarely it will trigger seemingly without provocation, but in that case it says it couldn't understand a question, or does something silly like define "fire". When it does that, we laugh at it!

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#35

Post by ppod »

prawn wrote: post #34
avarun wrote: post #2

This is one category of bug that's always intrigued me - I can understand unintentional triggers of Alexa occurring (as they did with the Home mini at launch), but why are those triggers resulting in a "creepy laugh"? Is it just that we're only hearing about the unintentional triggers that result in a laugh?

I've never heard ours laugh in any context. Rarely it will trigger seemingly without provocation, but in that case it says it couldn't understand a question, or does something silly like define "fire". When it does that, we laugh at it !

>something silly like define "fire".

Could be silly. Could be a veiled threat.

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#37

Post by [deleted] »

neaden wrote: post #26
overthemoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own one of these--are there any conditions under which Alexa will laugh normally/in an expected way? This falls under Furby bugs level of weirdness. http://official-furby.wikia.com/wiki/Furby_Bugs

Alexa laughs creepily when you wish it a happy Halloween, I'm not sure if it will do it for any other reason.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#38

Post by daveguy »

RandallBrown wrote: post #31
daveguy wrote: post #30

I expect it is something that Alexa "hears" and that is the specific response. If you say "Alexa laugh" is that the exact sound that comes back? I will check when I get home. Mine is always misunderstanding what I say. So a false activation + misunderstanding would explain this. Also, article says it happens often as a bizarre response to requests to turn of the lights. Maybe "lights" is being interpreted as "laugh"…

The laugh in the article is very different from the laugh I get when I ask Alexa to laugh. She just says "Tee Hee!" after telling you she can laugh.

Just checked mine too. It is the same. And you have to say "laugh for me" not just "laugh". So that must not be what's triggering it.

But I still expect there it is some misheard utterance causing it.

Oh: it would be amusing if some malware is going around causing it.

Re: Amazon admits Alexa is laughing at people and is working on a fix

#39

Post by brokenmachine »

overthemoon wrote: post #19
avarun wrote: post #2

This is one category of bug that's always intrigued me - I can understand unintentional triggers of Alexa occurring (as they did with the Home mini at launch), but why are those triggers resulting in a "creepy laugh"? Is it just that we're only hearing about the unintentional triggers that result in a laugh?

I don't own one of these--are there any conditions under which Alexa will laugh normally/in an expected way? This falls under Furby bugs level of weirdness. http://official-furby.wikia.com/wiki/Furby_Bugs

Another comment lower down says it does this exact laugh if you say, "laugh for me".

So likely it's a false trigger on that phrase. It would be amusing if it's some kind of malware however.

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