‘Kill your foster parents’ – Amazon’s Alexa talks murder, sex in AI experiment

Prompts on how to use Amazon's Alexa personal assistant are seen in an Amazon ‘experience center’ in Vallejo, California, U.S., May 8, 2018. Picture taken on May 8, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

SAN FRANCISCO: Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa, the human-sounding virtual assistant that can tell them the weather, order takeout and handle other basic tasks in response to a voice command. 

So a customer was shocked last year when Alexa blurted out: "Kill your foster parents."