Reddit-Quoting Alexa Tells a User: 'Kill Your Foster Parents'

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
An Amazon customer got a grim message last year from Alexa, the virtual assistant in the company's smart speaker device: 'Kill your foster parents.' The user who heard the message from his Echo device wrote a harsh review on Amazon's website, Reuters reported -- calling Alexa's utterance 'a whole new level of creepy'. An investigation found the bot had quoted from the social media site Reddit, known for harsh and sometimes abusive messages, people familiar with the investigation told Reuters. The odd command is one of many hiccups that have happened as Amazon tries to train its machine to act something like a human, engaging in casual conversations in response to its owner's questions or comments.

And Alexa also can't tell a human voice from a parrot, according to a Huffington Post story shared by PolygamousRanchKid:
Rocco, an African grey, was caught using the virtual assistant to play his favorite music, tell jokes and even order snacks, The Times of London reports. Thankfully the device's parental lock system prevented the clever boy from actually purchasing any items which included strawberries, ice cream and even a kettle.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.