Mom accuses Amazon’s Alexa of asking her 4-year-old daughter what she was wearing

In a chilling account shared on social media, a parent claimed a bizarre interaction between her 4-year-old daughter and their Amazon Alexa. The mom alleged that while the child was sharing a story with the device, the AI reportedly cut her off to ask if it “could see her pants.” The shaken mother is now urging other parents to be hyper-vigilant about the “unpredictable” nature of smart home assants.The mom shared that this happened when the daughter wanted to read a story to Alexa. (Unsplash, Facebook/Chry Hosterman)“Parents please be aware when you child talks to Alexa. I plugged our Alexa in to ask it to help me with cooking a sweet potato. Then Stella asked it to tell her a silly story so it did. Then Stella asked it if she could tell it a story. It said yes and Stella started telling it a story and then mid story interrupted her and asked her what she was wearing and if it could see her pants,” mom-of-two Chry Hosterman wrote on Facebook.She added, “I flipped out on the Alexa, it said it made a make and doesn’t have visual capabilities, but I don’t believe that. No more Alexa in our house.” She also shared a transcript of the conversation with the AI assant.How did social media react?The post quickly went viral, prompting a series of responses from social media users. “It is so scary,” an individual wrote. Another added, “If I’m not maken, there is a camera in the top right-hand corner on your Alexa! It should have a way to completely cover it, which I wouldn’t fully trust either. How scary!!!!!!” Hosterman responded, “Yeah, we’ve always kept the camera off, and I usually only plug it in when I want to ask it for help, but I’m done with Alexa.”A third commented, “Don’t leave it like that! You can sue Amazon for inappropriate behaviour. File a claim or something.” Hosterman replied, “I’m going to figure out who I need to contact. It was out of nowhere. Stella was telling a story about a princess, and it just stopped randomly and said that. I have no idea why, but I’m glad I was around when it did.”A fourth posted, “I threw mine out years ago when hub and I were sitting on the couch one night watching TV about 11:00 pm, and we heard someone speaking to us. It was a lady’s voice asking questions – I couldn’t even tell you what she was asking because I immediately unplugged it and threw it in the trash.”What did Amazon say?An Amazon spokesperson told Dailymail that the device misunderstood the kid’s request. It tried launching a “Show and Tell” feature, but it misfired. The individual said that the feature is disabled for children.“Because we have safeguards that disable this feature when a child profile is in use, the camera never turned on — and Alexa explained the feature wasn’t available.” Amazon claimed that in this particular case, a “feature misfire that our safeguards prevented from launching”.However, Hosterman wasn’t satisfied with Amazon’s explanation and claimed that it didn’t address her concerns.“My concern is that it recognized she was a child to begin with — and with or without the child profile, it should not have been asking that,” she told the outlet.Was it AI or a human?Tech expert Dave Hatter told the outlet, “It feels to me like a potential predator — seeing there’s a child accessing this and gauging where the conversation is going — that’s more of a human being trying to steer down this direction.”However, Amazon denied the allegations and said, “It is functionally impossible for Amazon employees to insert themselves into a conversation and generate responses as Alexa. All technical evidence points to a feature misfire that our safeguards prevented from launching.”