Alexa+ gets stuck on ‘la-la-la’: Amazon admits glitch

Amazon's Alexa+ voice assistant gets stuck on a single syllable for some users, repeating 'la-la-la' for several minutes in a row. The glitch became known from complaints by smart speaker owners: the first reports appeared on Reddit about a month ago, followed by videos on YouTube. Amazon confirmed the bug to Android Authority without disclosing its cause.

Alexa Plus (Alexa+) is a version of the assistant built on generative artificial intelligence, designed for more free-form conversation than classic Alexa. The strange glitch appeared specifically in it.

One user reported that the speaker did not fall silent for almost ten minutes. Some of those affected link the glitch to a recent software update.

A separate oddity concerns an attempt to understand the situation through Alexa itself. When a user asked the assistant why it was behaving that way, Alexa denied everything: according to it, there was no routine or announcement with such a phrase, and the sound could have come from another source or the user might have misheard something. Even when the user insisted that he had heard 'la-la-la' from the speaker itself, the answer did not change.

Amazon says the fix is already being rolled out and that the problem affects a small number of Alexa Plus users. The company did not specify which device models are affected or when the update will reach everyone.

This is not the assistant's first oddity. Several months ago, speaker owners complained that Alexa made guttural sounds resembling an animal's growl. At the same time, Amazon continues to embed generative AI into its services: the company recently showed a neural network that adjusts actors' lip movements to match dubbing.

Translation editor: Салтанов А.