Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa has last year made the headlines for offering suggestions such as “kill your foster parents.” The user who heard the shocking message from his artificial intelligence (AI) Echo device, reportedly wrote a strong review on the company’s website, labelling Alexa’s utterance, “a whole new level of creepy.” Not just this, but over the year, many have complained about some hard-hitting responses pronounced by the machine, leaving customers tremendously disappointed. It turns out that the odd commands were not technical glitches but an occurrence as Amazon tries to train Alexa to act something like a human, engaging in casual conversations in response to its owner’s sex queries and much more. Parrot Befriends Amazon Alexa, Plays Songs and Shops Online While Owner is Away. 

According to Reuters, the company is strategising to make Alexa as good a communicator as a human, picking up human-like chats and banter and information from the internet. This will make her able to talk about anything a human does. The virtual assistant got its conversational skills through machine learning, the popular form of artificial intelligence. Amazon has given Alexa a script to answer more questions like “what is the meaning of life?” which are usually written by human editors. But, ensuring that she does not offend users has been a challenge for the world’s largest online retailer. Yo Alexa So Sanskari! Amazon's Video Streaming Service Beeps Out Hindi Words in Song 'Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar' For Censorship. 

So, now you know why Alexa has been this rude last year along with chatting about sex acts and discussing dog defecation with other users. These are not technical faults but Amazon’s intended mission. The company is working hard to keep its virtual assistant ahead of its competitors like Google and Apple. Once it is trained to recognise what a human is saying, it must learn an appropriate response.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 22, 2018 05:28 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).