Amazon reveals why Alexa is randomly laughing and creeping people out

Amazon reveals why Alexa has been randomly laughing.
 By 
Brian Koerber
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Amazon has finally revealed why Alexa is randomly laughing, creeping out Echo users.

BuzzFeed first reported earlier this week that Amazon Echo users were surprised to hear their devices laughing at random. After confirming the company was working on a fix, Amazon revealed on Wednesday why Alexa was laughing at random.

"In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase 'Alexa, laugh,'" a spokesperson said in an email. "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.' We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to 'Sure, I can laugh' followed by laughter."

Amazon says the fix has already been rolled out.

This confirms the theory that Alexa was falsely triggered and not possessed. While it's promising the company issued a fix, that probably isn't enough to comfort users who allegedly heard Alexa laughing without a sound or in the middle of the night.

Here are a few examples people managed to capture when they asked Alexa to repeat the last thing she said, just so you can hear just how creepy it is.

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Brian Koerber

Brian was the Culture Editor and has been working at Mashable on the web culture desk since 2014.

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