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Late at night, in the gathered shadows of your bedroom, you may have heard it. Or, perhaps you heard it over breakfast with your family in the kitchen, the sound rising unbidden from over your shoulder in a corner of the room you had thought — and now, desperately wish — to be empty.

At least, that's what Amazon Echo owners say they've been hearing lately. In recent weeks, many of them have hit social media saying they their smart speakers have been laughing spontaneously, unprompted by commands.

https://twitter.com/CaptHandlebar/status/966838302224666624

The random cackling, as you can imagine, has been described variously as 

"I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on," 

 "After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh."

https://twitter.com/taylorkatelynne/status/970738507718283265

https://twitter.com/GavinHightower/status/967999257398702083

As it turns out, these Echo owners are not hearing voices. Well, they are -- but these voices are, in fact, real: Amazon has confirmed that the device's virtual assistant has been laughing without users' intentional commands, and the company says it is working on a fix.

"In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase 'Alexa, laugh.' We are changing that phrase to be 'Alexa, can you laugh?' which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance 'Alexa, laugh,' " a spokesperson said in a statement.

"We are also changing Alexa's response from simply laughter to 'Sure, I can laugh,' followed by laughter."

Now, if you do not happen to own an Amazon Echo and you are still hearing laughter from empty rooms inside your house ... well, it really may be time to move.

Science

Colin Dwyer

Author

After social media lit up with tales of creepy laughter, we now know why: The Echo's virtual assistant has been spontaneously laughing at its users. Now, the company says it is working on the issue.

Good news, everyone creeped out by Alexa's random laughing. A fix is on the way

Go Deeper.

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