Amazon investigating smart speakers for laughing at users

LOS ANGELES: Amazon is investigating its intelligent personal assistant Alexa following reports that it had randomly laughed at users, according to US media on Wednesday.
The retailer's investigation was prompted after users posted clips on social media showing Alexa-enabled loudspeakers laughing without being prompted, Amazon told technology website The Verge.
"We're aware of this and working to fix it," Amazon said in a statement.
One of the first to post video of the glitch was Twitter user CaptHandlebar late last month.
"So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen ... I thought a kid was behind me," the tweet was captioned.
GavinHightower was trying to fall asleep when Alexa let out "a very loud and creepy laugh".
"There's a good chance I get murdered tonight," the user tweeted.
Amazon told The Verge it planned to fix the glitch by disabling the phrase "Alexa, laugh" and replacing it with the command "Alexa, can you laugh?" The question was "less likely return false positives", the company said.
Amazon will also change Alexa's response so it announces it will laugh before doing so. — dpa