An Amazon Alexa device in Hamburg, Germany spontaneously activated at 1:50 AM and played music at full volume for over an hour while the owner was away, leading to police breaking into the apartment and the owner receiving a 500 euro bill for lock replacement.
Oliver Haberstroh's Amazon Alexa device in Hamburg, Germany spontaneously activated at 1:50 AM on a Friday night/Saturday morning while he was out at the Reeperbahn enjoying a beer. The device began playing music from Spotify at full volume without any command from the user or use of his mobile phone. The loud music continued from 1:50 AM to 3:00 AM, disturbing neighbors who initially banged on his door asking him to turn it down. When there was no response because Haberstroh was not home, the frustrated neighbors called police. The police also received no response when they knocked, so concerned that something terrible had happened, they broke down the door to discover only the Alexa device playing music on its own. The police turned off the music, replaced the door lock with a new one, and left. When Haberstroh returned home, he found his keys no longer worked and had to visit the police station to get new keys along with a 500 euro ($582) locksmith bill. Amazon's logs showed the device started playing music just three minutes after Haberstroh left his apartment, suggesting he may have accidentally triggered Alexa while trying to use Spotify on his phone before leaving WiFi range. Amazon later offered to pay the 500 euro bill as a goodwill gesture.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed