#CreepAlert: Alexa says to its owner, "I see people dying"
San Francisco-based Echo user Shawn Kinnear has reported that Amazon's digital smart voice assistant Alexa recently made an unprompted and disturbing statement at his home. According to Kinnear, Alexa activated herself and said, "Every time I close my eyes, all I see is people dying." Horrified, when the 30-year-old asked her to repeat the statement, Alexa said "she did not understand."
This is first time Alexa acted out of ordinary: Kinnear
Kinnear said, "Alexa is in the living room. I had Amazon Prime on TV but it was paused. I walked back in from the kitchen and she made her statement." The horrifying declaration was "followed by the [most] uncomfortable silence I have felt," he added.
The device is not used much in the Kinnear household
Kinnear informed that the Amazon Echo was gifted to his partner in 2016 and mostly sat unused at the house. Alexa was only occasionally asked about the weather and score reports by his partner. After this incident, the couple wants to permanently unplug the device. Notably, Amazon is yet to comment on the incident.
Is it a technical glitch though?
According to security expert Chris Boyd of Malwarebytes, "For all we know, his Alexa recorded some audio from the TV and decided to play it back at the worst possible moment." The exact reason regarding why Alexa's core feature triggered in the background is not known, but it being a tech glitch seems highly unlikely.
Earlier, Alexa's unsolicited, random laughter scared users
Earlier in March, in a strange and rather amusing bug, users of Amazon Echo reported that Alexa seemed to randomly start laughing of her own accord, without being prompted to. The complaints stated that the laughter came without the devices being woken up, that is, without the signature blue light that accompanied responses on Alexa-enabled devices.
