Amazon says it has updated its voice assistant after it transpired that Alexa had suggested a 10-year-old girl touch a coin to the prongs of a partially inserted plug as a challenge.
The girl’s mother posted a tweet on Monday describing how her daughter had been doing some cold-weather indoor challenges set by a phys. ed. teacher on YouTube and was seeking another one. To the woman’s shock, Alexa suggested a “simple” task it had found on the web, whereby the participant “plug[s] in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch[es] a penny to the exposed prongs.”
The dangerous “penny challenge” started making the rounds on TikTok and other platforms about a year ago and can potentially lead to electric shock as well as cause a fire.
Hellbound and Down 