The act of touching a coin to half-exposed live plugs has been making rounds on the internet for about a year. It is called “the penny challenge”. A 10-year old was unfortunately issued the challenge recently by Alexa.
The girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl shared a screenshot of the challenge on Twitter. Kristin Livdahl says that when her 10-year old asked Alexa for a challenge, the speaker responded with “Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs”
According to the BBC report the mother said, “We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Bad weather outside. She just wanted another one.” This is when the Alexa-enabled speaker suggested the challenge that it found on the web.
As we’ve said above, the penny challenge isn’t new and has been making the rounds on the internet for the past year.
In a separate Tweet, Kristin Livdahl shared a response from Amazon which reads, “We are currently working with our developers regarding your Alexa concern. As soon as we receive further information, we’ll contact you with an update. In the meantime, please feel free to reply to this email with any questions or concerns you may have”.
Amazon told the BBC in a statement that “it had updated Alexa to prevent the assistant recommending such activity in the future”. The statement reads, “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.”