Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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- Jan 31, 2009
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Alexa Is Randomly Laughing, But Nobody's in on the Joke
Some Alexa users have heard random, creepy giggles from the virtual assistant in recent weeks. Amazon says it's aware of the issue.
March 7, 2018
https://www.pcmag.com/news/359719/alexa-is-randomly-laughing-but-nobodys-in-on-the-joke
Turns out, these users aren't being overly dramatic or hallucinating these strange LOLs. In a Wednesday statement to PCMag, Amazon confirmed this is an actual thing that's happening.
"We're aware of this and working to fix it," Amazon said. The online retail giant did not elaborate when asked what might be causing this strange phenomenon.
News of this Alexa oddity comes after the service went down for several hours last week. During the outage, Echo device owners reported seeing red rings rather than blue, as well as a variety of error messages, including: "I'm having trouble understanding right now. Please try a little later"; "I'm not sure what went wrong" and "Sorry, your Echo lost its connection."
A recording of the laugh is at the above link.
Hmmm, maybe Alexa saw the most recent season 11 X-Files episode "Rm9sbG93ZXJz" which was great by the way. So was "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat". IMO, the best X-Files of any season are the ones that have little or nothing to do with the stupid, overly convoluted alien conspiracy cr*p with the humorous ones being the best.
Update: Amazon said the odd behavior is the result of Alexa mistakenly hearing "Alexa, laugh." It's disabling that command and will require "Alexa, can you laugh?" if you want to get a reaction. On top of that, it won't just laugh -- it'll acknowledge your request first. The full statement:
"In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase 'Alexa, laugh.' We are changing that phrase to be 'Alexa, can you laugh?' which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance 'Alexa, laugh.' We are also changing Alexa's response from simply laughter to 'sure, I can laugh' followed by laughter."
Some people claim it laughs unprompted, so the above doesn't explain that although background noise could trigger it. People have also claimed to have been awakened by it. Talking in their sleep? People have said it sometimes laughs when they command lights on or off and I can see how "Alexa, lights" might be misinterpreted as "Alexa, laugh." Did this error originate with a relatively recent firmware update which would explain why the problem suddenly appeared or is this a long standing problem that finally reached critical mass with enough people reporting it? Who knows?
Some Alexa users have heard random, creepy giggles from the virtual assistant in recent weeks. Amazon says it's aware of the issue.
March 7, 2018
https://www.pcmag.com/news/359719/alexa-is-randomly-laughing-but-nobodys-in-on-the-joke
Turns out, these users aren't being overly dramatic or hallucinating these strange LOLs. In a Wednesday statement to PCMag, Amazon confirmed this is an actual thing that's happening.
"We're aware of this and working to fix it," Amazon said. The online retail giant did not elaborate when asked what might be causing this strange phenomenon.
News of this Alexa oddity comes after the service went down for several hours last week. During the outage, Echo device owners reported seeing red rings rather than blue, as well as a variety of error messages, including: "I'm having trouble understanding right now. Please try a little later"; "I'm not sure what went wrong" and "Sorry, your Echo lost its connection."
A recording of the laugh is at the above link.
Hmmm, maybe Alexa saw the most recent season 11 X-Files episode "Rm9sbG93ZXJz" which was great by the way. So was "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat". IMO, the best X-Files of any season are the ones that have little or nothing to do with the stupid, overly convoluted alien conspiracy cr*p with the humorous ones being the best.
Update: Amazon said the odd behavior is the result of Alexa mistakenly hearing "Alexa, laugh." It's disabling that command and will require "Alexa, can you laugh?" if you want to get a reaction. On top of that, it won't just laugh -- it'll acknowledge your request first. The full statement:
"In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase 'Alexa, laugh.' We are changing that phrase to be 'Alexa, can you laugh?' which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance 'Alexa, laugh.' We are also changing Alexa's response from simply laughter to 'sure, I can laugh' followed by laughter."
Some people claim it laughs unprompted, so the above doesn't explain that although background noise could trigger it. People have also claimed to have been awakened by it. Talking in their sleep? People have said it sometimes laughs when they command lights on or off and I can see how "Alexa, lights" might be misinterpreted as "Alexa, laugh." Did this error originate with a relatively recent firmware update which would explain why the problem suddenly appeared or is this a long standing problem that finally reached critical mass with enough people reporting it? Who knows?
