Girls have been talking to their Barbies for years, but now these Babies will actually listen and talk back.
As exciting as it sound to a 4-year-old, a group of parents calls it “creepy” and is moving towards using Mattel to keep them off shelves.
“Hello Barbie” is fitted with a small embedded chip, a microphone, a speaker and a Wi-Fi interface that transmits the child’s questions to servers to be processed by voice-recognition software and sends back the appropriate answers. Hello Barbie is programmed with various questions, jokes which are processed by the backend software in response to whatever the kid wants to talk about.
Kids using ‘Hello Barbie’ aren’t only talking to a doll, they are talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial, said Susan Linn, the director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
At a toy fair in New York City, where Hello Barbie was announced, a spokeswoman asked Barbie “What should I be when I grow up?” The response included related inputs recorded earlier in the conversation: “Well, you told me you like being on stage, so maybe a dancer?”
ToyTalk, the toy company overseeing the development of the new Barbie with Mattel said 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.
Mattel said the company is giving girls what they have always asked for: having a conversation with Barbie.
Mattel is committed to safety and security, and ‘Hello Barbie’ conforms to applicable government standards, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a Mattel spokesperson said.
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has fired up a petition against Hello Barbie.
“Hello Barbie” is still scheduled to hit toy stores this fall and will cost $74.99.
