TikTok 'Outlet challenge': Mom says Alexa dared girl, 10, to touch live plug with coin
A Minnesota mom was left astonished when Amazon's Echo voice assistant, Alexa, suggested a dangerous TikTok trend when her 10-year-old daughter had asked the device to suggest an exercise. Ironically, Alexa pulled the challenge from an article, where it was quoted that parents are against their children doing the "outlet challenge."
The voice assistant responded to the young girl's question by saying: "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs". This challenge, if done, could be potentially a fatal act. After hearing the suggestion, Kristin Livdahl, the girl's mom, has slammed Amazon, who later apologized.
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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
Kristin took to Twitter to narrate this incident as she wrote: "OMFG My 10 year old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said." As proof, she has even attached a screenshot from the Alexa app.
Kristin said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on our foot, as the physical education teacher on YouTube said earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one."
The voice assistant pulled the challenge from the internet search called "outlet challenge" done by children that went viral on TikTok last year. The internet trend involved plugging a charger part-way into a wall and trying to create a spark by touching the exposed prongs with a coin.
After hearing the challenge thrown by the voice assistant, the mother of the 10-year-old girl had intervened by yelling, "No, Alexa, No!" The so-called, "penny challenge" created a lot of troubles in the past. Commenting on the viral trend that has been spreading on video-sharing app TikTok, Michael Clusker who worked as a fire station manager in Carlisle, Cumbria, said, "Electric shock from the challenge can kill participants".
Clusker said teens taking inspiration from social media need to be more responsible. "I do think social media is an issue, giving people ideas that are probably not ideal". "People should take responsibility for their own actions," he added.
In one instance that happened in the US, a teen dropped a penny on the prongs of an iPhone charger plugged into an outlet and firefighters had to run to the school to solve the issue.
Amazon issued a statement, saying, "Customer trust is at the center of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers". "As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it." The statement also mentions that Alexa is updated to prevent it from recommending such activities again in the future.
It is to be noted that no deaths were reported from the viral Tiktok outlet challenge, so far.