Amazon Alexa mistakenly orders USD 160 dollhouse
Occurred: January 2017
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A six-year-old girl in Dallas, Texas, mistakenly ordered an expensive dollhouse via her Alexa-enabled Amazon Echo device, leaving her parents with an expensive bill.
Megan Neitzel’s daughter was talking to Alexa about a dollhouse and cookies when Alexa mistook the conversation as a request to purchase the goods and ordered a KidKraft Sparkle mansion dollhouse and four pounds of sugar cookies.
Megan later admitted she had never read the manual or learned about Alexa's child lock properties. The system offers the ability to add a passcode to prevent accidental purchases. She later donated the dollhouse to a local hospital.
A San Diego TV report about the incident caused Echoes in viewers' homes to also attempt to order dollhouses.
Operator: Megan Neitzel
Developer: Amazon
Country: USA
Sector: Consumer goods
Purpose: Interact with users
Technology: Speech recognition; Natural language understanding (NLU)
Issue: Safety; Accuracy/reliability
Transparency: Governance
System
News, commentary, analysis
https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-echo-orders-dollhouses-after-hearing-tv-presenter-talking-10722985
https://qz.com/880541/amazons-amzn-alexa-accidentally-ordered-a-ton-of-dollhouses-across-san-diego/
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/05/health/amazon-alexa-dollhouse-trnd/index.html
https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/07/tv_anchor_says_alexa_buy_me_a_dollhouse_and_she_does/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/7/14200210/amazon-alexa-tech-news-anchor-order-dollhouse
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/6-year-old-accidentally-orders-high-end-treats-with-amazons-alexa
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: March 2023