Amazon Admits Mistakes After Asking 10 Year Olds To Do Deadly TikTok Challenge

Amazon later acknowledged the error had occurred on its smart device. (photo: Brandon Romanchuk / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Amazon's smart device, Echo, has a 10-year-old boy take on a deadly challenge that went viral on TikTok via his voice assistant, Alexa.

According to the child's mother, Kristin Livdahl, who explained on Twitter, that when the child asked Alexa to show what challenges to do, Alexa actually showed a very dangerous challenge for Livdahl.

"Tell me a challenge to do," said the child, to which Alexa replied, "Here's something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com: The challenge is simple: plug the phone charger about halfway into a power outlet, then touch a penny to open branches," he said.

OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said. pic.twitter.com/HgGgrLbdS8

— Kristin Livdahl (@klivdahl) December 26, 2021

Seeing Livdahl's complaint, Amazon later acknowledged the error had occurred on its smart device, stating that it would fix it immediately.

"As soon as we became aware of this error, we took immediate action to correct it," Amazon told BBC International.

Following Amazon's statement, Livdahl tweeted that when she asked to be shown a challenge again by Alexa, it no longer worked. Previously, Livdahl did various other challenges with the child.

"We did some physical challenges, like lying down and rolling over holding shoes to your feet, from a (physical education) teacher on YouTube before. The weather was bad outside. He just wanted something else."

That's when Alexa suggested taking part in the deadly challenge, and it was discovered on the web. The malicious activity, known as "The Penny Challenge" began circulating on TikTok and other social media sites about a year ago.

The challenge can be deadly because metal conducts electricity and plugging it into a live electrical socket can cause electric shock, fire and other damage.

Amazon isn't the only company having trouble trying to browse the web for content. In October, a user reported that Google was displaying a potentially harmful suggestion in one of its feature snippets.

The info it displays comes from a section of the web page, which explains what not to do when someone has been arrested. In Alexa's case, an algorithm picks the descriptive part of an alert and amplifies it without the original context.