Recent incidents of hackers gaining control over household cleaning robots, using them to shout racist slurs, have exposed a dark side of smart home devices.

These vacuums had no filter. U.S. homeowners were shocked when their Chinese-made robot vacuums were hijacked and rewired to bombard them with racial slurs. The racist hack attack affected Ecovacs Deebot X2s — a brand that’s manufactured in China — across several American cities,

Reports have emerged from multiple U.S. cities of robot vacuums being hacked, including one instance where a man reported his vacuum shouting racial slurs. The hacking incidents, which occurred over a few days in May across various U.

The hackers took over the devices and used the built-in speakers to shout offensive racial slurs to anyone nearby.