Police broke into a man's flat when his AI speaker started playing music at full-volume in the early hours of the morning – when nobody was home.
Oliver Haberstroh, who lives in Germany's Hamburg, says his Alexa-enabled speaker started playing music when nobody was at home to control it.
According to The Independent, police had to break into his sixth-floor flat in order to investigate the disturbance, which was reported to them by Haberstroh’s neighbours.
The speaker started playing music between 1:50am and 3am when Haberstroh was out.
To his surprise, when he returned home he found a new lock on his door. He quickly visited the police station where he was given the new set of keys and an invoice.
He wrote on Facebook: “While I was relaxed and enjoying a beer, Alexa managed on her own, without command and without me using my mobile phone, to switch on at full volume and have her own party in my apartment.”
“She decided to have it at a very inconvenient time, between 1.50am and 3.00am. My neighbours called the police.”
Amazon has offered to cover Haberstroh’s bill, however they claim Alexa “didn’t malfunction” but was "remotely activated."
The company told the Inquirer: “Working directly with the customer, we have identified the reason for the incident.”
“Echo was remotely activated and the volume increased through the customer's third party mobile music-streaming app.
“Although the Alexa cloud service worked flawlessly, Amazon has offered the customer to cover the cost for the incident.”
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
