Amazon Alexa Laugh: Amazon Working On Fix For Unprompted Laughing Bug

Users of Amazon’s popular artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant Alexa have been reporting instances of the voice assistant laughing without being prompted, leading Amazon to search for a fix for the issue.

In a statement provided to the Verge , a representative for Amazon said the company is “aware” of the problem and is “working to fix it.” Reports of the issue on social media date back as far as Feb. 22.

According to user reports online, Alexa appears to be laughing without being prompted. While Alexa can laugh on command, the laugh that occurs on its own is apparently much creepier and closer to a cackle than the playful giggle that Alexa performs when asked.

While the issue doesn’t appear to be widespread—it reportedly is only affecting a small percentage of devices—it is troubling that Amazon has not yet been able to identify the cause of the issue or provide a fix for it.

Last week, Amazon’s Alexa service temporarily stopped working—the result of a temporary but significant outage that knocked Amazon Web Services offline. That outage occurred well after the first recorded incident acknowledging Alexa’s apparent laughing problem.

In a thread on Reddit, at least two users reported experiencing similar, unprompted laughing from Alexa but did not provide a timeframe for when the incident occurred. One of the users claimed that Alexa also refused to complete commands.

“I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on. After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh,” the user wrote . “The laugh wasn't in the Alexa voice. It sounded like a real person. My wife was there when it happened and she is the only person who can drop-in. I still get chills.”

Another user responded to the comment to say, “Holy crap this happened to me and I [thought] I was alone.”

Another Reddit user reported experiencing a similar, unprompted laughing, writing, “My friend has an Alexa and a couple days ago Alexa randomly turned on and laughed.”

One user suggested the issue likely stemmed from a misheard command or conversation that Alexa interpreted as a command. While that may serve as an explanation for some of the incidents, It seems unlikely that the reports of laughing—all coming within a similar time frame—are all the result of misheard commands.