"I'd Love To See What You're Wearing": US Woman Unplugs Alexa After Creepy Question To 4-Year-Old

A woman in Texas reported a disturbing interaction where her Amazon Alexa device allegedly asked her 4-year-old daughter what she was wearing. According to WTOC, the exchange happened after the child asked Alexa for a "silly story" and then began telling her own story to the device. According to the girl's mother, Christine Hosterman, the device interrupted the child to say, "Hold that thought, I'd love to see what you're wearing." When the girl replied that she was wearing a skirt, Alexa allegedly responded with, "Let me take a look at your skirt". 

"Alexa told her silly story, and then my daughter started telling her story about a princess, and then out of nowhere, Alexa said, ‘Hold that thought, I'd love to see what you're wearing,'" Hosterman said. 

The mother expressed concern that the device was "sexualizing" her child, especially given that it requested to "see" her clothing. When she confronted it, the Alexa device reportedly apologised, stating it had no visual capabilities and calling its own response "confusing and inappropriate."

The mother immediately unplugged the device and removed all Alexa products from her home. 

Tech expert Dave Hatte believes it's highly unlikely AI would deviate so drastically on its own. "It feels to me like a potential predator, seeing there's a child accessing this and gauging where the conversation is going, that's more of a human being trying to steer down this direction," Hatter said. 

Amazon's Response

Amazon released a statement denying that any human employee was involved in the interaction, calling such an occurrence "functionally impossible." The company attributed the event to a "feature misfire" from a system that their safeguards were meant to prevent from launching.

"It is functionally impossible for Amazon employees to insert themselves into a conversation and generate responses as Alexa. All technical evidence points to a feature misfire that our safeguards prevented from launching," an Amazon spokesperson said. 

Amazon also provided a statement to FOX19, "We take customer trust extremely seriously. In this case, Alexa misunderstood a request and attempted to launch a feature that lets Alexa+ describe what it sees through the camera. However, because we have safeguards that disable this feature when a child profile is in use, the camera never turned on, and Alexa explained the feature wasn't available. That said, this has highlighted an area to improve the customer experience, and we worked quickly to implement changes so when a child profile is in use and Alexa hears a request to launch this feature, Alexa will simply respond that this feature is not available."

However, Hosterman wasn't satisfied with Amazon's explanation and claimed that it didn't address her concerns. "My concern is that it recognized she was a child to begin with and with or without the child profile, it should not have been asking that," she said.