Alexa, why have you left us fumbling in dark?
Thousands of households unable to control lights or thermostats after fault with Amazon smart speakers
AN OUTAGE caused Alexa smart speakers to go down yesterday leaving homeowners unable to switch on lights or control thermostats.
Thousands of the Amazon devices, which people use to control internetconnected “smart” appliances in their homes, cut out yesterday morning.
The tech giant said that the fault was rapidly fixed but declined to explain what caused the blackout. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of socalled “smart homes” that increasingly rely on the internet to run everyday devices and household functions.
Smart speakers are popular devices in the fast-growing smart home sector. They are internet-connected speakers controlled by voice commands that allow users to, amongst other things, play music, set timers for cooking, answer simple questions such as “What is the weather like today?” or “Play the latest headlines from The Telegraph” for two-minute audio briefings twice-daily.
They are also the focal point for other smart devices such as internet-connected lights and kettles, which can also be switched on and off by voice commands. Amazon’s Alexa is one of the most popular smart speakers, having sold more than 100 million devices worldwide.
According to the website Downdetector, which records internet outages, more than 8,000 reports of Alexa problems were recorded by 8am yesterday.
Users of the smart speaker soon took to social media to complain of the havoc the blackout was causing in their homes. Luke Hilton, in Sheffield, said on Twitter: “The great thing about having ‘smart’ [light] bulbs, is that when Alexa isn’t working I can’t turn my lights on.”
Another Twitter user, Henry Elliss, from Reading, complained: “Not the best day to live in a house where the lights, radio, music and thermostat are all controlled by Alexa”. Other users joked that they were having to relearn how to turn lights and other household appliances, such as kettles, on manually again.
Some said that they had woken up late or overslept as Alexa is often used as an alarm clock.
Amazon said the fault behind the outage was resolved by mid-morning. A spokesman said: “This morning we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service. The Alexa service is now operating normally.”
However, the technology company declined to comment on what caused the fault.
Amazon has previously been accused of being opaque about how its Alexa operates amid privacy fears over how much data it records. In 2019, the company was criticised after it emerged that Amazon staff listened to select recordings of users’ voices. At the time, Amazon said its staff only listened to “extremely small samples of Alexa voice recordings” to “improve the customer experience”.
Yet doubts have persisted over how much data the devices, which are always listening for commands unless they are switched off, collect and store.
MPS have previously been warned by experts that the legal framework around some smart speakers is so complex that it is unclear what interactions they are allowed to record and share with their parent companies.