Amazon Is Working on a Fix to Stop Alexa Randomly Laughing at Customers

Amazon’s in-home digital assistant Alexa has reportedly been unexpectedly laughing out loud at people as they go about their daily business.

The apparently random laughing has been creeping out some users and has generated a good deal of discussion on social media.

Alexa can be accessed via the Amazon Echo and other Amazon devices.

A number of users have reported the creepy laughing in recent weeks.

So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. Freaked @SnootyJuicer and I out. I thought a kid was laughing behind me. pic.twitter.com/6dblzkiQHp

— CaptHandlebar (@CaptHandlebar) February 23, 2018

My #Alexa just laughed out of the blue while I was in the middle of a conversation. So creepy! Here’s what she played pic.twitter.com/5dGLkwZsgV

— Tal Goldfus (@talgoldfus) February 23, 2018

But, Amazon has now identified the issue and is working to change Alexa so that the random laughing is less likely to happen.

A March 8, 2018, New York Times report on the issue notes :

Now, Amazon says that it knows why that’s been happening and is working to fix the problem.

“In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh,'” when other words are spoken, Amazon said in an emailed statement. “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.'”

After the fix, when customers say “Alexa, can you laugh?’, the device will respond with the phrase “Sure, I can laugh.” before actually laughing.