Alexa Will Buy Anything You Say You Want

This isn’t necessarily a good thing.

On the past two episodes of the Dear Hank and John podcast, Hank, John, and Katherine Green have been discussing when people will start using voice-activated tools like the Amazon Echo (aka Alexa) or Google Home to commit theft:

HANK: The question is: can I buy a television commercial and steal a bunch of stuff from people by activating their Alexas and making them send me things, with my very loud television commercial that I put on some television show.

KATHERINE: Alexa, mail Hank Green 900 Snickers.

[…]

HANK: I’m worried about Alexa hacking, in some weird, like, somebody’s going to walk up to your back window and scream at your Alexa to, like, make it do stuff.

Alexas can lock and unlock doors, after all. They can also, as one family recently learned, buy toys and cookies:

Rogue Hungry Child Uses Alexa To Order $160 Worth Of Cookies, Doll House Without Parents’ Permission

Turns out, the couple’s children had been playing with the newly gifted Echo Dot, asking it knock-knock jokes and commanding Alexa to sing when they decided to go on a bit of a shopping spree.

“I just asked her if she could order a doll house and some cookies, and she said, ‘Do you want this?’ and I said ‘Yes,’” the family’s six-year-old daughter recalls.

WFAA in Dallas reported the original story:

Dallas 6-year-old orders dollhouse, 4lbs of cookies using Amazon’s ‘Alexa’

“I get an Amazon notification that says your order has shipped, and I thought that’s interesting,” said [parent Megan Neitzel]. “I had not made an order!”

But there was the order confirmation, in Neitzel’s email showing the KidKraft Sparkle Mansion at a cost of $162.32 and a four pound tin of sugar cookies.

I’m very curious whether the daughter specifically requested the KidKraft Sparkle Mansion and sugar cookies, or whether Alexa suggested those items for her. The KidKraft Sparkle Mansion is, when you look it up on Amazon, pretty amazing. (I want to play with one, and I’m an adult.) But a tin of sugar cookies? You do realize that Amazon can send you Triple Double Oreos, which are Oreos with three cookies and two layers of creme, right?

And yes, I know that Alexa has parental controls and at least one confirmation dialogue between me singing “I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas” and Alexa buying me a crate of apples and bananas, but there’s totally a genie-in-a-bottle or Monkey’s Paw element to this whole thing, in which we’re going to start needing to be very careful what we wish for.

Because Alexa wants to give it to us, and then charge us for it.

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