Amazon to fix the Alexa 'creepy laugh' issue

From the past few days, users of Amazon Alexa have been hearing strange laughing noises from the device at random periods.  Some users have said that the laughter happened in response to unrelated commands, while others reported that it occurred unprompted. Some users said that the laughter is so creepy that they are unable to sleep at night.

The real reason why the laughing noise is heard has been confirmed by Amazon. The company said, "The voice assistant can mistakenly hear the phrase “Alexa, laugh,” which under its normal programming would trigger it to chuckle."  The company further said, "We are changing that phrase to be ‘Alexa, can you laugh?’ which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.'" The e-commerce giant is also changing the assistant’s response to the prompt from simply laughter to “Sure, I can laugh,” followed by laughter.

Few users took to social media to report about the issue.

My #Alexa just laughed out of the blue while I was in the middle of a conversation. So creepy ! Here's what she played pic.twitter.com/5dGLkwZsgV

— Tal Goldfus (@talgoldfus) February 23, 2018

I swear to god my amazon echo just LAUGHED at me. Like a creepy witch laugh out of NOWHERE. IS THIS HAPPENING TO ANYONE ELSE???

— MVTT (@_MVTTP) March 8, 2018

So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. Freaked @SnootyJuicer and I out. I thought a kid was laughing behind me. pic.twitter.com/6dblzkiQHp

— CaptHandlebar (@CaptHandlebar) February 23, 2018

Alexa suddenly laughing out loud is not the first time that these smart speakers have faced criticism. Previously, Google Home Mini disabled its faulty recording feature when it discovered that the device was listening and recording the conversations 24*7 without their consent.