Alexa invites a 10-year-old child to put a penny on a partially open plug

A 10-year-old girl and her mother received a lesson in the usefulness of voice assistants after Amazon Alexa invited the girl to try the TikTok Plug Challenge. According to the girl’s mother, Kristin Livdal, the dangerous proposal was made after her daughter asked Alexa to make a call.

“We did some physical exercises like lying down and turning over while holding on to the leg from Phy Ed teacher on YouTube earlier,” Livdal explained in her Twitter thread. “She just wanted another one.”

For the (thankfully) uninitiated, the plug problem is to partially plug your phone charger into an electrical outlet and then drop a penny on the exposed pins. Results can range from a small spark to a complete electrical fire.

“I was right there and yelled, ‘No, Alexa, no! “like it was a dog, “ Livdal tweeted. “My daughter says she’s too smart to do something like that.”

Amazon has since removed this particular issue from the Alexa database, as confirmed in a BBC statement.

“Customer trust is at the center of everything we do, and Alexa is dedicated to providing customers with accurate, relevant, and useful information,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Once we became aware of this bug, we quickly fixed it.”