In a creepy account shared on social media, a parent claims a strange interaction occurred between her 4-year-old daughter and their child Amazon Alex. The mum claimed that while her child was sharing a story on the device, the AI interrupted her and asked if it “could see her pants.The shocked mother is now urging other parents to be extremely wary of the “unpredictable” nature of smart home assistants.
“Parents, please pay attention when your kids are talking to Alexa. I got through Alexa and asked it to cook sweet potatoes for me. Then Stella asked it to tell her a silly story, which it did. Then Stella asked it if she could tell it a story. It said yes and Stella started telling it a story, then interrupted her mid-story to ask what she was wearing and if it could see her pants,” wrote mother of two Christy Hosterman. Facebook.
She added: “I’m so angry Alexit says it made a mistake and has no visual capabilities, but I don’t believe it. We no longer have Alexa in our homes. ” She also shared a transcript of her conversation with the AI assistant.
How was the social media reaction?
The post quickly went viral, prompting a flurry of responses from social media users. “This is horrible,” one person wrote. Another added, “If I remember correctly, your Alexa has a camera in the top right corner! There should be a way to cover it completely, but I’m not entirely convinced either. It’s scary!!!!!” Hosterman replied: “Yeah, we leave the camera off all the time and I usually only plug it in when I want to ask for help, but I’m tired of Alexa.“
A third person commented, “Don’t just do it! You can sue Amazon for wrongdoing. File a claim or whatever.” Horstmann responded: “I’m going to figure out who I need to contact. It just came up. Stella was telling a story about a princess and it suddenly stopped and said something like this. I don’t know why, but I’m glad I was around when it happened.”
A fourth person posted, “I threw mine away a few years ago when my husband and I were sitting on the couch watching TV around 11:00pm and we heard someone talking to us. It was the sound of a woman asking a question – I couldn’t even tell you what she was asking because I immediately unplugged it and threw it in the trash.“
What does Amazon say?
An Amazon spokesperson told MailOnline the device misunderstood the child’s request. It tried and failed to launch a “show and tell” feature. The person stated that the feature has been disabled children.
“Because we have protections in place to disable this feature when using a child profile, the camera never turns on – Alexa explains that the feature is unavailable.Amazon claims that in this particular case, “our security measures prevented the feature from launching.”
However, Horstmann was not satisfied with Amazon’s explanation and claimed it did not address her concerns.
“My concern is that it acknowledged at the outset that she was a child – which it should never have asked whether there was child material or not,” she told the outlet.
Is it artificial intelligence or human?
Technology expert Dave Hatter tells way out“To me, it feels like a potential predator — seeing a child access this and judging the direction of the conversation — it feels more like a person trying to steer this direction.“
However, Amazon denied the accusations, saying: “It is functionally impossible for an Amazon employee to interject into a conversation and generate a response like Alexa. All technical evidence shows that our security measures prevented this feature from launching.”
