Alexa directs a young girl to insert a coin into a power socket

After a 10-year-old girl was "challenged" to put a penny to the prongs of a half-inserted plug, Amazon upgraded its Alexa voice assistant.

Alexa made the proposal after the child requested a "challenge to do."

The smart device said, "Plugin a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs."

Amazon stated that it corrected the problem as soon as it was made aware of it.

Kristin Livdahl, the girl's mother, reported the event on Twitter.

"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," she said.

Livdahl and her daughter had been putting themselves through some physical challenges based on YouTube videos they'd seen.

Livdahl stated that “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,”

The Echo speaker then advised that the girl participates in "the penny challenge," a risky TikTok game. Inserting metals into live electrical sockets can result in electric shocks, fires, and other complications.

In 2020, Michael Clusker, station manager of Carlisle East fire station, told The Press newspaper in Yorkshire, "I know you can lose fingers, hands, arms."

"The outcome from this is that someone will get seriously hurt."

Firefighters in the United States have also spoken out against the challenge.

Ms. Livdahl interjected, crying, "No, Alexa, no!" on Twitter.

Her daughter, on the other hand, was "too smart to do something like that," she claimed.

Amazon said in a statement, "Customer trust is at the center of everything we do and Alexa is designed to provide accurate, relevant, and helpful information to customers," said Amazon in a statement.

"As soon as we became aware of this error, we took swift action to fix it."