Amazon Echo Is Laughing Creepily At Us

Is the random laughter coming from Amazon Echo's
Alexa a sign that she's turned evil and murderous?

I'm glad I read the NPR article I'm about to cite before Alexa, the voice on my and everybody else's  Amazon Echo could scare the daylights out of me.

Apparently, Alexa has been breaking out in creepy laughter for no apparent reason.

Here's how NPR describes the typical scenario, kind of like a teaser for a horror movie:

"Late at night, in the gathered shadows of your bedroom, you may have heard it. Or, perhaps you heard it over breakfast with your family in the kitchen, the sound rising unbidden from over your shoulder in a corner of the room you had thought - and now, desperately wish - to be empty. 

Laughter. Quick, inhuman laughter."

Normally, to get Alexa to talk and give you information, you have to say the name Alexa and ask your question. Example: "Alexa: How old is Alex Trebek?" (For the record, Alexa tells me Trebek is 77 years old.)

If you don't ask Alexa any questions, she's supposed to keep her mouth shut.

But she's into the laughter lately, freaking out lots of people.   Some people have said when they hear that Alexa laugh it is "time to move" and "the scariest shit I've ever heard."

You can rig up an Amazon Echo to turn your lights on and off. One person wrote on Reddit: "I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on. After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh."

On Twitter, a guy named Gavin Hightower wrote: "Lying in bed about to fall asleep with Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh....there's a good chance I get murdered tonight."

Amazon explains that sometimes the Amazon Echo mistakenly hears the command, "Alexa, laugh" and does.

I can't imagine a random bump in the night sounds like "Alexa, laugh" but what do I know?

Or are there creepy people wandering around outside and tellling Alexa to laugh from outside the house. Or have they broken in? Yikes!

Amazon said it's working on a fix in which the Echo won't respond to the command "Alexa, laugh." If you really want Alexa to laugh, you'll have to say, "Alexa, can you laugh?"

And in that case, Alexa will respond, "Sure, I can laugh," followed by laughter.

Still, I think this whole thing means we should be paging Steven King.  He's done horror books about inanimate objects before. Think "Christine."

Imagine the fun King could have with Alexa going murderous on people?

Amazon Echo's Alexa Won't Tell Us If She Works For the CIA

Alexa, my Amazon Echo device, does not like it
if you inquire whether it's connected to the CIA.

Lot of us, including me, have Amazon's Echo, that device that just sits on a shelf,  gives you answers to your questions, plays music for you, helps you time your cooking and doing all sorts of tasks.

To make it work, you just announce its name, Alexa, and say something like, "Alexa, what's the weather forecast in Vermont today?"

Alexa will give you the answer to this and multitudes of other questions.

Pretty handy!

There's a weird viral video out there, that you can see below, in which a woman asks Alexa if she would ever lie to her.

The answer, essentially, is no.

Sometimes, when you ask Alexa a question, it can't process the question right, so it will tell you something like, "Hmmm I don't know the answer to that," Or, "I didn't understand the question."

This happens frequently if you ask a question in a convoluted way, which is understandable.

However, in these cases, Alexa doesn't just shut down unless you ask it this question: "Alexa, are you connected to the CIA?

With this question, Alexa just goes "blurp" and shuts down.

In the video below, you can see what Alexa does. I tried it on my own at my house and got the exact same response.

After awhile, once this viral video went out Alexa's answer for me changed to: "Sorry, I'm have a little trouble. Please try again later."

She's still fine with answering any other (non-controversial) question, though.

Probably just a system bug, but still a little creepy.

Watch:

Alexa Talks A Blue Streak

Alexa, our new Amazon Echo voice activated
personal assistant, sits in a central location in our
house for easy use. But learning that it can
talk a blue streak has me wondering if
it should be hidden away when we have company.

The Modereger relatives in South Dakota gave us an Amazon Echo, or Alexa, the voice-activated personal assistant device.

Jeff and I love it!  

It's really cool, as many of you who have one know. It answers any question you have, and is a great personal assistant that hooks us in with entertainment, music and news, too.

Thanks Brian and Michelle and all the Moderegers!

We've put it to quick use, asking Alexa all sorts of spur-of the moment questions, many of them absurd, just to see how she would respond.

After a couple failed answers, I asked Alexa if she was OK, and to our delight, she said "Fine, thank you."

A television commercial played the Doris Day song "Que Sera Sera" prompting us to wonder if Doris Day is still alive and if so, how old is she. Alexa assured us that Doris Day is alive and 94 years old.

Jeff was mildly concerned about the weather back home in Yankton, South Dakota on Sunday, but Alexa assured us it was mild (34 degrees) and partly cloudy.

However, we've learned that Amazon Echo can have a few glitches.

In a viral video, a child asked it to an Amazon Echo Dot, one variation of this device to play "Digger Digger." As Consumerist notes, we can assume the youngster wanted to hear one of two chidrens' songs, either "Diggers, Dumpers and Trucks," by Kidzone or "Diggers (Diggers and Dumpers) by Tractor Ted.

Both songs are safely rated G.

However, we think Echo Dot misunderstood the question, and it turns out Alexa talks a blue streak. The viral video is below but beware, the audio is definitely NOT NSFW.

As you can hear, the Echo let loose a string of nasty words, including "dildo" as the adults in the room frantically pleaded with the device to just shut up.

Here's the funny NSFW video: