The Dark Side of Alexa: Suggests Dangerous TikTok Challenge to Young Child
Are robots taking over the world? Maybe not (yet,) but a new TikTok challenge is causing concern over Artificial Intelligence.
Super Helpful or Super Dark?
Helpful software like Siri and Alexa are in some form artificial intelligence. They are super helpful convenient and full of endless data. However, the Amazon software Alexa has a dark side.
Super Sketchy Vibes
A mother of a 10-year-old is raising flags about Alexa and the dangers of children using it without parental supervision. Kristin Livdahl recently encountered a super sketchy experience with Alexa.
Livdahl said she regularly uses Alexa to "motivate her children to try out physical challenges, like balancing a broomstick on their hands." Like any other day, her 10-year-old asked Alex for a challenge prompt.
What the device recommended was beyond alarming. Livdahl heard with her own ears the dark challenge the software recommended for her 10-year-old to try.
According to the transcripts, this was the recommendation from Alexa:
"Here's something I found on the web ... The challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs."
Yikes, suggesting a 10-year-old to go anywhere near an outlet with a penny is concerning. Livdahl was startled and began yelling "'No, Alexa! No, stop!" she told ABC News.
For those unfamiliar with what Alexa was suggesting, the outlet challenge started going viral on TikTok.Users were essentially, challenging themself to get shocked.TikTok did its best to remove all hashtags and videos that promoted the challenge.
Amazon told ABC News "Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant and helpful information to customers. As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it."