Amazon's Alexa Plus Glitch Makes It Repeat 'Lalala'
Some Amazon Echo smart speakers running Alexa Plus have started behaving oddly, according to The Verge. Instead of answering normally, the voice assistant sometimes breaks into saying, and even singing, just the sound "lalala" over and over, stretching on for several minutes. This often happens right in the middle of a user's conversation with the device, catching people off guard. Stranger still, when owners ask Alexa why it did this, the assistant seems to have no memory or explanation for the glitch. The bug highlights how even advanced AI-powered voice assistants can fail in unpredictable, hard-to-diagnose ways, raising questions about reliability as these systems take on more complex conversational tasks in everyday homes.
Words to know
- Alexa Plus
- — An upgraded version of Amazon's voice assistant Alexa, built into Echo smart speakers.
- Amazon Echo
- — Amazon's line of smart home speakers that use the Alexa voice assistant.
- Bug
- — An unintended flaw in software that causes it to behave incorrectly.
- Voice assistant
- — An AI program that listens to spoken requests and responds with speech or actions.
Summary written from The Verge's headline and teaser