Connected Barbie
Connected Barbie
I'm speechless.
Originally shared by Gideon Rosenblatt
Barbie, the "Sociable Robot"
"She's constantly staying relevant and up-to-date."
Staring this fall, Barbie is going to stay way more hip, thanks to her new wifi connection that will tether her to a Barbie-in-the-cloud database of total Barbie-ness - the Great Barbie in the Sky.
"I like to be on stage too."
Following in the fine tradition of Furbie and My Real Baby, this new "Hello Barbie" marks a shift to sociable robotics. She speaks, tells jokes and even carries on some limited form of conversation, taking into account some of what you say to her. This is software performing sociability. You can see some examples with the prototype of the toy revealed recently at the launch in New York (the video at the bottom of the attached article).
"I always say - anything is possible."
The new Barbie is not without her share of controversy, however. Little girls quite frequently like to talk to their dolls, even play acting with them to work out complex emotions or problems that they're having. So what do we make of a situation where those formerly intimate conversations are now being recorded and shared with Hasbro via some sort of Barbie cloud? This gets us into murky, tricky terrain.
ToyTalk, the company behind the talking part of the new Barbie says it's still working through its privacy policy for the new doll, but notes that parents will be able to access the child's recordings. Hmmm...is that supposed to be reassuring? Shouldn't a kid be able to have a private conversation with a doll - to work things out that she may be going through without having her parents necessarily listening in?
Learning Barbie
So, what exactly are ToyTalk and Hasbro hoping to do with all of the collected data?
In an interview, ToyTalk chief executive Oren Jacob stressed that the audio files the doll collects will be used only to improve the product, including helping it build better speech recognition models for children. "The data is never used for anything to do with marketing or publicity or any of that stuff. Not at all," Jacob said.
In other words, starting this fall, thousands of little girls will become virtual mamas teaching their babies how to be sociable. Actually, it's not "babies" but rather one baby, a centralized meta-Barbie, hosted on a Barbie Cloud, getting smarter and smarter about how to interact with and get little girls to love her.
Welcome to the weird, new future of toys.
Related Topics:
Unrequited Love in the Time of Technology
http://www.the-vital-edge.com/unrequited-love/
(for background on sociable computing)
The Key to Creating Value in Business
http://www.the-vital-edge.com/creating-value-in-business/
(for background on Internet of Things devices with a centralized service)
#barbie #iot #ai #toys #sociablerobotics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/11/privacy-advocates-try-to-keep-creepy-eavesdropping-hello-barbie-from-hitting-shelves/?tid=sm_tw
I'm speechless.
Originally shared by Gideon Rosenblatt
Barbie, the "Sociable Robot"
"She's constantly staying relevant and up-to-date."
Staring this fall, Barbie is going to stay way more hip, thanks to her new wifi connection that will tether her to a Barbie-in-the-cloud database of total Barbie-ness - the Great Barbie in the Sky.
"I like to be on stage too."
Following in the fine tradition of Furbie and My Real Baby, this new "Hello Barbie" marks a shift to sociable robotics. She speaks, tells jokes and even carries on some limited form of conversation, taking into account some of what you say to her. This is software performing sociability. You can see some examples with the prototype of the toy revealed recently at the launch in New York (the video at the bottom of the attached article).
"I always say - anything is possible."
The new Barbie is not without her share of controversy, however. Little girls quite frequently like to talk to their dolls, even play acting with them to work out complex emotions or problems that they're having. So what do we make of a situation where those formerly intimate conversations are now being recorded and shared with Hasbro via some sort of Barbie cloud? This gets us into murky, tricky terrain.
ToyTalk, the company behind the talking part of the new Barbie says it's still working through its privacy policy for the new doll, but notes that parents will be able to access the child's recordings. Hmmm...is that supposed to be reassuring? Shouldn't a kid be able to have a private conversation with a doll - to work things out that she may be going through without having her parents necessarily listening in?
Learning Barbie
So, what exactly are ToyTalk and Hasbro hoping to do with all of the collected data?
In an interview, ToyTalk chief executive Oren Jacob stressed that the audio files the doll collects will be used only to improve the product, including helping it build better speech recognition models for children. "The data is never used for anything to do with marketing or publicity or any of that stuff. Not at all," Jacob said.
In other words, starting this fall, thousands of little girls will become virtual mamas teaching their babies how to be sociable. Actually, it's not "babies" but rather one baby, a centralized meta-Barbie, hosted on a Barbie Cloud, getting smarter and smarter about how to interact with and get little girls to love her.
Welcome to the weird, new future of toys.
Related Topics:
Unrequited Love in the Time of Technology
http://www.the-vital-edge.com/unrequited-love/
(for background on sociable computing)
The Key to Creating Value in Business
http://www.the-vital-edge.com/creating-value-in-business/
(for background on Internet of Things devices with a centralized service)
#barbie #iot #ai #toys #sociablerobotics
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/11/privacy-advocates-try-to-keep-creepy-eavesdropping-hello-barbie-from-hitting-shelves/?tid=sm_tw
Good one. Too bad we can't say the same for her. ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Zara Altair.
You are most welcome.:) Gideon Rosenblatt
ReplyDelete