Amazon Says a Fix for Alexa’s Creepy Random Laughter Is Coming

Amazon Echo Creepy Laugh Credit: New York
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In the wake of reports that some Echo devices were spontaneously emitting “inhuman” laughter, which began surfacing on various social media platforms within the last few weeks, Amazon has officially responded — not only acknowledging the bizarre claims made by some users as fact, but promising that a fix is currently in the works.

“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh’,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement obtained by NPR.

“We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh,’ followed by laughter.”

Laughing Out Loud

Describing the sounds as something along the lines of “quick, inhuman laughter,” an alarming number of Amazon Echo owners began flooding social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks, lodging bizarre — but true — claims that their Echo personal assistants have been “laughing spontaneously” — unprompted by voice commands which would have otherwise garnered the disturbing cackles.

As NPR and a number of other media outlets including The Verge reported, these users flooded social media sites — and even created a forum over on Reddit — where a growing number of the puzzled customers described the laughing, cackling sounds as everything from “really creepy” to “the scariest s*** I’ve ever heard.”

“I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on,” said one Reddit user, who added that “After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh.”

While the claims are certainly troubling in themselves, apparently they were not unfounded, as the California-based e-commerce giant this week acknowledged the claims that certain Echo devices had in fact been laughing entirely of their own volition without requiring commands of any kind.

Thankfully, as Amazon said in its statement, a software-level fix is currently in development and on the way. So those who’ve been awoken or otherwise startled by the “loud and creepy” laughter need not worry for much longer — though there’s currently no word on when, exactly, the update will be released.

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