Amazon acknowledged on Wednesday that some of its Alexa-enabled devices have developed a new skill: creeping out their owners with unexpected and unwarranted bursts of robotic laughter. “She didn’t even say anything, just laughed.”CaptHandlebar (@CaptHandlebar) So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. The company suggested in an email that the laughs had occurred “in rare circumstances” because the speaker was picking up a “false positive” for the command “Alexa, laugh”. Amazon will change the command for laughter to “Alexa, can you laugh?” and disable the shorter command. It will also program Alexa to preface its simulacrum of human emotion with the phrase: “Sure, I can laugh.”

Source: The Guardian March 07, 2018 22:07 UTC