Alexa challenges 10-year old girl to stick a penny into a wall socket. It’s a TikTok-inspired challenge that Alexa makes, before the tech company orders it fixed

  •  Kristin Livdahl tweeted about Alexa telling her and her daughter to complete the dangerous ‘outlet challenge’
  • This challenge requires users to ‘plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs’
  • This TikTok trend was in 2020 and prompted alerts across the US about how hazardous it is 
  • DailyMail.com was informed by Amazon that Alexa has been removed from the challenge 










Amazon Alexa can provide challenges for users when they are asked. But a mother was stunned when her daughter, 10, suggested that she take on a TikTok challenge.

Kristin Lilivdahl took to Twitter to share her thoughts about Sunday’s incident. Kristin stated that Alexa had instructed Alexa to tell her child to “plug in a smartphone charger halfway into a wall outlet. Then touch a penny on the exposed prongs.”

Last year, TikTok’s US trend was the “outlet challenge”.

Amazon spokeswoman told DailyMail.com via email that the tweet was not fake, but that the challenge has been removed. The issue was quickly identified and we immediately took action to correct it.

Scroll down to see the video 

Kristin Livdahl tweeted about the incident on Sunday, stating that Alexa told her child to 'plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs'

Kristin Lilivdahl took to Twitter to share her thoughts about Sunday’s incident. Kristin stated that Alexa had instructed Alexa to tell her child to plug in the phone charger halfway to the wall and touch the prongs with a penny.

Livdahl stated that she and her daughter had been doing physical challenges set by Alexa. These included rolling and laying down to relieve the frustrations of the bad weather.

Amazon claims that Alexa uses Bing for her search queries. The company also asks its users to improve the answers.

According to the website, ‘Our customers desire Alexa to become smarter and better to them each day.’ We use customer requests for Alexa’s speech recognition and natural language understanding systems to improve our machine learning.

Amazon uses Bing to search for the items, so it is likely that the “outlet Challenge” came up. Alexa repeated it to the mother and daughter (10 years old)

This 'outlet challenge' was a TikTok trend in the US last year. Pictured is a still from a TikTok video showing someone perform the challenge

The ‘outlet’ challenge was an American TikTok trend last year. This is an image from TikTok that shows someone performing the challenge.

The outlet can catch fire during the challenge. Pictured is a still from a TikTok video showing someone perform the challenge

During the challenge, the outlet could catch fire. The image is from TikTok and shows someone performing this challenge.

In the comments to Livdahl’s tweet, some Twitter users made fun of Alexa’s evilness.

“I thought Alexa was evil.” User Lesli How wrote: “Just didn’t think Alexa was that evil.”  

Another user tweeted: “The machine uprising is underway.”

In 2020, the outlet challenge was discovered. This prompted firefighters from across America to alert parents and warn them about TikTok’s dangerous video.

Some in the comments of Livdahl's tweet joked that they thought Alexa was up to no good, and potentially 'evil'. 'I suspected Alexa was evil. Just didn't suspect Alexa was this evil,' someone wrote.

In the tweet’s comments, some joked about Alexa being evil and up to no good. “I thought Alexa was evil,” someone wrote. I didn’t know Alexa was so evil,” someone said.

Massachusetts firefighters, specifically, issued an alert across the state in January 2020, after two students at Plymouth North High School in Plymouth were caught attempting to stick a penny into a phone charger, which resulted in two scorched electrical outlets

Massachusetts firefighters specifically issued an alert to the entire state on January 2020. It was after two students from Plymouth North High School tried to put a penny inside a charger for their phones. The result: two electric outlets were completely melted.

Massachusetts firefighters issued an alert in January 2020 after students from Plymouth North High School were caught trying to insert a penny in a cell phone charger. This caused two electrical outlets to be charred.

Plymouth Fire Chief Ed Bradley said that social media raises the quality of firefighting.

They see it online and laugh. Then they go away laughing and nobody gets hurt.

Advertisement