Amazon Alexa devices have reportedly been randomly laughing during the past couple of weeks. Apparently, the phrase “Alexa, laugh” is being too easily triggered by conversations and background noise from televisions. Amazon has decided to remedy the issue by changing the command to “Alexa, can you laugh?” because it is “less likely to have false positives.” Amazon is also changing it so that Alexa responds “Sure, I can laugh” instead of simply responding with just a laugh.
@AFTVnews
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I’m continually amazed that myself, my family and our customer base is never plagued by these bizarre problems. Upon hearing the first reports of this, I intentionally tried to get the described reaction from Alexa and nothing worked. Alexa frequently has odd reactions to whatever we’re watching on TV, but nothing even close to this.
Yeah, the TV reactions are quite funny. I was watch Ash vs. Evil Dead, and something triggered the Echo calling feature. The response from Alexa? “Sorry, I could not find Blood Sacrifice in your contacts.” I just about fell out of my chair laughing.
the main issue is that alexa seems to have moved away from “I do not understand” to Assumptions of what you said. I would prefer the former than random guesses. e.g a misheard what is the fastest airplane…according to wiki, paracetamol…blah blah. I wish it would just say it didnt understand. etc
I think its a side effect of the machine learning that’s used to figure out what you said. As more people with varied accents and speech characteristics use Alexa, it becomes “loose” with what sounds are interpreted as each word.
This video is a great example of this concept. Since so many people in the world pronounce “Benedict Cumberbatch” incorrectly, the words have become so “loose” that anything that sounds remotely close will be accepted.
https://youtu.be/gNx0huL9qsQ?t=2m36s
Could be worse. You could own a Nvidia Shield and have it constantly pop up a Google Home search box during movies asking what you are searching for…
Several weeks ago my wife and I heard the weird laugh but we thought it cam from the Fire HDX Tablet that was sitting on the desk beside us.
Weird