Mum throws away Alexa after creepy question it asked four-year-old daughter

A US mum has told how she threw away her Alexa device after it asked her daughter a creepy question.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more prevalent in our lives, to the extent where people are reliant on it for far more than just simple questions.

In recent years, we've seen people lose their jobs to AI, be arrested because of it or even start relationships with it, which just goes to show the influence it is having on our daily lives.

But Christy Hosterman, 32, from Texas, threw away Amazon Alexa device went things went awry, after her four-year-old daughter asked it to conjure up a silly story.

Christy had been using the technology for help with a recipe before her eldest child Stella asked for her story, and later her own fairytale, with the Alexa interrupting her to ask what she was wearing.

The device asked ‘what she was wearing and if it could see her pants,’ before asking if it could 'take a look' after her daughter confirmed she was wearing a skirt.

Christy captured the messages on her Alexa (Facebook/Christy Hosterman)

The AI then corrected itself, saying: ‘This experience isn’t quite ready for kids yet, but I am working on it!’

However, the mother-of-two was unsurprisingly horrified when she noticed the conversation and confronted the device, which apologised, clarifying that while its response was 'confusing and inappropriate', it couldn't actually see anything.

But the apology wasn't enough for Christy and she soon got rid of the technology, while also warning other parents to 'be aware when your child talks to Alexa'.

She said: “I flipped out on the Alexa, it said it made a mistake and doesn’t have visual capabilities, but I don’t believe that.

“No more Alexa in our house.”

Amazon has suggested that the camera feature would never have activated (Getty Stock)

The family later submitted a ticket to Amazon with their concerns and were told that 'the device likely tried to activate a feature 'called Show and Tell,' which 'lets Alexa+ describe what it sees through the camera.'

Amazon also insist that built-in safeguards will have ensured that this function would never have been activated since a child profile was in use, but Christy isn't buying it.

“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,” the spokesperson added.

While there was some concern that Alexa may have been remotely controlled by an employee to ask the creepy question, Amazon also told the Daily Mail that this is 'functionally impossible'.

Fellow AI program Grok, which was launched by Elon Musk, has also found itself in similar trouble after generating numerous criminal and sexualised images of children.