Amazon Alexa Challenges 10-Year-Old Girl to Touch Live Plug with a Coin

According to a BBC News report, Amazon’s Alexa digital voice assistant recently asked a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug, after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”.

Dubbed “the penny challenge”, the activity has been circulating on TikTok and other social media websites for almost a year. Alexa suggested partaking in the challenge that it had “found on the web”. 

“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” Amazon’s echo speaker said. The girl’s mother took to Twitter to describe the incident:

“We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one,” she wrote.

Amazon said in a statement that it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant recommending such activity in the future.

“Customer trust is at the centre of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers,” said Amazon in a statement.

“As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it.”

Have you ever asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”?