Amazon Alexa has said some really creepy things this year that went viral, and now users can add another creepy event to that list.
What An Alexa In California Said
In 2016, Shwan Kinnear's partner Paul received an Amazon Echo as a Christmas present. Although he hardly used the device, it decided to randomly speak to him.
On June 18, Kinnear was walking back from the kitchen into the living room of his home. The 30-year-old had his Amazon Prime paused on the television when his Amazon Echo said, "Every time I close my eyes, all I see is people dying."
Kinnear had no idea what prompted the disturbing message from the Amazon Echo. After it made that statement in a normal voice, he said that the Amazon Echo said nothing else.
He asked Alexa to repeat it again, and Alexa had no memory of it. Since it was a random statement, Kinnear said that he did not have any time to record the message.
"I don't use much integrated home tech," he told Metro. "I have a lot of other tech stuff. Computers, gaming, so on. But my house is about 80 years old so a lot of the integration doesn't work. With lathe and plaster walls wifi is difficult."
Should People Be Concerned About Alexa?
"Rest assured it'll turn out to be a perfectly humdrum glitch," security expert Chris Boyd told IFLScience. "Alexa has had issues in the past, and if one of its core features has triggered in the background accidentally, it could lead to all sorts of shenanigans. For all we know, his Alexa recorded some audio from the TV and decided to play it back at the worst possible moment."
Boyd said that he is more concerned with other devices in the house than he is with Alexa. As of June 23, Amazon has not commented on the incident in San Francisco.
Other Creepy Things Alexa Has Done
This incident is not the first time that Alexa has said or did something strange in 2018. In March, a glitch forced Alexa to randomly laugh at users. Some people even said that is was creepy and sinister. Amazon responded to the complaints by issuing a fix that involved disabling a command.
In May, it was reported that Alexa secretly recorded a couple's conversation and shared it with a random contact. Amazon later explained that someone might have triggered a word that sounded like "Alexa."
