Amazon’s Alexa ‘goes rogue’ & triggers German police raid
Police broke down the door of a Hamburg apartment after receiving complaints of a wild party taking place, but all they found was Amazon’s intelligent personal assistant Alexa having fun while the owner was away.
Neighbours called the police to complain about loud music blaring from the apartment. When police arrived and forced their way in, they found the apartment empty, except for the Amazon Alexa which was blasting music. Alexa is an “intelligent personal assistant,” that can be instructed to control music, lights and search for things online.
“While I was relaxed and enjoying a beer, Alexa managed on her own, without command and without me using my mobile phone, to switch on at full volume and have her own party in my apartment,” Alexa’s owner Oliver Haberstroh wrote on Facebook.
"She decided to have it at a very inconvenient time, between 1.50am and 3am. My neighbours called the police."
The police had to break into the apartment in order to get inside. Haberstroh joked that when he asked Alexa to cover the cost of the new lock on the door, it responded, “I didn't find any answer to the question."
Amazon released a statement, saying, “working directly with the customer, we have identified the reason for the incident,” the Mirror reports.
"Echo was remotely activated and the volume increased through the customer’s third party mobile music-streaming app. "Although the Alexa cloud service worked flawlessly, Amazon has offered the customer to cover the cost for the incident," it added.
