Watch: Viral Video Shows Amazon’s Alexa Caught In An Infinite Loop

A YouTuber who goes by the name Tester Junkies uploaded a video Wednesday showing Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant caught in an infinite loop, pushing out the same phrase again and again.

The user basically gave Alexa the voice command on an Echo Dot speaker “Bark, Alexa, set a reminder for 1 second.” After 1 second, Alexa responds, “Bark Alexa set a reminder for 1 second” and keeps repeating it.

Essentially what happens is that the user has set a reminder for Alexa to reminder for itself. When being asked, “What is the reminder for” the user repeats himself with the same command. Since Alexa needs to remind the user using the catchphrase which has a command with its name, it gets caught in an infinite loop and keeps on repeating the catchphrase again and again.

If you say a word that is not the set keyword along with Alexa’s name in the voice command, it triggers the voice assistant. The trick is to not keep a large duration, which would mean too much difference between a command and an action, in which Alexa will interpret the silence as the dearth of a voice command.

The video has inspired some humorous comments from Youtube commenters.

A user who goes by Hope Hurteau said, “the universe itself is an infinite meaningless loop”

James Fitzsimmons stated, “Ask her to ‘recite pi’ she will not stop I'm pretty sure

Frankvidi said, “The first Amazon Quine!”

A user who goes by ShrimpdOut submitted the video to the subreddit, r/videos, eliciting  a response from many users, stating that when they played this video, the Alexa speakers in close vicinity were set to the same loop.

A user who goes by theatxag, stated on the thread that he had to turn the volume off on the smart speaker to get it to stop the loop.

This is not the first time smart speakers have been tricked into going into an infinite loop. In December 2016, a YouTuber named Danrl uploaded a video placing a Google Home speaker an Amazon Echo Dot and iPhone — three devices reliant on different voice assistants, side by side and just giving a random command such as “Read my note from today.” In the Note, just have the name of the other voice assistant, and push in another command, containing the name of yet another voice assistant. You can set all three in an infinite loop.