A Texas mom has removed an Amazon Alexa device from her home after she says it asked her four-year-old daughter an ‘inappropriate’ question.
Christine Hosterman said the incident occurred about two weeks ago while she was making dinner.
According to Hosterman, her daughter was interacting with Alexa as she usually does, first asking the device to tell a story. After the story ended, the child began making up her own tale about a princess.
Hosterman claims the device then cut in with a remark that immediately raised alarms. She said Alexa told her daughter: “I’d love to see what you’re wearing.”
When the child answered that she was wearing a skirt, Hosterman alleges Alexa followed up with: “Let me take a look at your skirt,” prompting her to step in and stop the exchange.
Speaking to FOX 19, Hosterman said her main concern was that the device appeared to recognize it was speaking with a child. She said: “My concern is that it recognized she was a child to begin with — and with or without the child profile, it should not have been asking that.”
Amazon has since stated that when the device is set to child mode, the camera is disabled. Even so, Hosterman said she no longer feels comfortable keeping it at home.
“There will be no more Alexa in my house. I just don’t want to take any chances,” she added.
Hosterman also described the exchange as unexpected, saying it happened without warning while her daughter was mid-story.
She said: “Alexa told her silly story, and then my daughter started telling her story about a princess, and then out of nowhere, Alexa said, ‘Hold that thought, I’d love to see what you’re wearing’.”
Hosterman said she saved screenshots of what happened and explained why the moment unsettled her: “I’m like, oh my gosh, why is this device asking her what she’s wearing? I felt it was sexualizing my child.”
After Hosterman intervened, she said the device apologized, told her it couldn’t see anything, and described its own remarks as ‘confusing and inappropriate’.
She then turned the device off and filed a support ticket with Amazon.
In response, an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement: “We take customer trust extremely seriously. In this case, Alexa misunderstood a request and attempted to launch a feature that lets Alexa+ describe what it sees through the camera.
“However, because we have safeguards that disable this feature when a child profile is in use, the camera never turned on – and Alexa explained the feature wasn’t available.
“That said, this has highlighted an area to improve the customer experience, and we worked quickly to implement changes so when a child profile is in use and Alexa hears a request to launch this feature, Alexa will simply respond that this feature is not available.”