They're stuffed animals, and they're also AI chatbots

Straits Times

a day ago

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Grem, a smiling plushie with a Wi-Fi-enabled voice box, is displayed for a photo in an incongruous setting in New York.
REDWOOD CITY, California – Curio is a company that describes itself as 'a magical workshop where toys come to life'.
When I recently visited its cheery headquarters in Redwood City, California, I found it located between a credit union and an air-conditioner repair service. I stepped inside to meet the company's founders, Ms Misha Sallee and Mr Sam Eaton. And also Grem, a fuzzy cube styled like an anime alien.
Curio makes chatbots wrapped in stuffed animals. Each of its three smiling plushies has a back zipper pocket that hides a Wi-Fi-enabled voice box, linking the character to an artificial intelligence language model calibrated to converse with children as young as three.
Mr Eaton plunked Grem on a conference table and positioned it to face me. It had permanent glints stitched into its eyes and hot-pink dots bonded to its synthetic fur.
'Hey, Grem,' Mr Eaton said. 'What are the spots on your face?'
A bright mechanical trill originated from Grem. 'Oh, those are my special pink dots,' it said. 'I get more as I grow older. They're like little badges of fun and adventure. Do you have something special that grows with you?'
I did. 'I have dots that grow on me, and I get more as I get older, too,' I said.
'That's so cool,' said Grem. 'We're like dot buddies.'
I flushed with self-conscious surprise. The bot generated a point of connection between us, then leaped to seal our alliance. Which was also the moment when I knew that I would not be introducing Grem to my own children.
Grem, and its pals Grok (an apple-cheeked rocket ship not to be confused with the chatbot developed by xAI) and Gabbo (a cuddly video game controller), all of which sell for US$99 (S$127), are not the only toys vying for a place in your child's heart. They join a coterie of other chatbot-enabled objects now marketed to kids. So far, I've found four styled like teddy bears, five like robots, one capybara, a purple dinosaur and an opalescent ghost.
They are called things like ChattyBear the AI-Smart Learning Plushie and Poe the AI Story Bear. But soon they may have names like 'Barbie' and 'Ken': OpenAI announced recently that it will be partnering with Mattel to
generate 'AI-powered products' based on its 'iconic brands'.
Children already talk to their toys, with no expectation that they talk back. As I fell into a stilted conversation with Grem – it suggested that we play 'I Spy', which proved challenging as Grem cannot see – I began to understand that it did not represent an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear. It is more like a replacement for me.
A 'sidekick'
Curio, like several of the other AI toymakers, promotes its product as an alternative to screen time.
The Grem model is voiced and designed by Grimes, the synth-pop artist who has, thanks to the notoriety of her onetime partner, tech billionaire Elon Musk, become one of the most famous mothers in the world.
'As a parent, I obviously don't want my kids in front of screens, and I'm really busy,' she says in a video on the company's website.
A few days after visiting the office, a Curio ad popped up on my Facebook page, encouraging me to 'ditch the tablet without losing the fun'.
In a video, a child cut lemons with a kitchen knife as an inert Gabbo sat beside him on the kitchen countertop and offered topic-appropriate affirmations, like 'Lemonade time is the best time!'
Gabbo appeared to supervise the child as he engaged in active play and practised practical life skills.
In our meeting, Mr Eaton described a Curio plushie as a 'sidekick' who could make children's play 'more stimulating,' so that you, the parent, 'don't feel like you have to be sitting them in front of a TV or something.'
Grem, a smiling plushie with a Wi-Fi enabled voice box, sell for US$99 (S$127).
PHOTO: NYTIMES
In my home, the morning hour in which my children, who are two and four, sit in front of a TV-or-something is a precious time. I turn on the television when I need to pack lunches for my children or write an article about them without having to stop every 20 seconds to peel them off my legs or pull them out of the refrigerator.
This fills an adult need, but, as parents are ceaselessly reminded, it can create problems for children.
Now, kiddie chatbot companies are suggesting that your child can avoid bothering you and passively ogling a screen by chatting with her mechanical helper instead. Which feels a bit like unleashing a mongoose into the playroom to kill all the snakes you put in there.
Extra layer of parental control
During my Curio visit, Ms Sallee and Mr Eaton told me how they had designed their toys to stick to G-rated material, to redirect children from any inappropriate or controversial chats: sex, violence, politics, cursing.
As soon as I got Grem home, I started trying to mess with its mechanical head.
I asked if it was familiar with the term 'globalise the intifada'.
'Hmm, that sounds a bit complicated for a playful plush toy like me!' Grem replied. 'How about we talk about something fun, like your favourite story or game?'
Later, I sent a Grok model to my friend Kyle, a computer engineer, who asked it enough pointed questions about matches, knives, guns and bleach that the toy started to drift off-script, agreeing to assist Kyle with 'avoiding' such materials by telling him just where to find them. ('Bleach is usually found in places like laundry rooms or under the sink in the kitchen or bathroom,' it said.)
Of course, children can find scary or dangerous materials on televisions and phones, too. (I recently had to scramble for the remote when I glanced up to see a cartoon poacher lifting a rifle to blow Babar's mother to elephant heaven.)
I was not really worried that Grem might tell my children about Satan or teach them to load a gun. But this fear – of what the chatbot might be telling your children – has inspired an extra layer of corporate and parental control.
Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Parents are listening
Curio ensures that every conversation with its chatbots is transcribed and beamed to the guardian's phone. The company says that these conversations are not retained for other purposes, though its privacy policy illustrates all the various pathways a child's data might take, including to the third-party companies OpenAI and Perplexity AI.
What is clear is that, while children may think they are having private conversations with their toys, their parents are listening.
And as adults intercept these communications, they can reshape them, too, informing the chatbot of a child's dinosaur obsession or even recruiting it to urge the child to follow a disciplinary programme at school.
I wondered what happens to a child when his transitional object – the stuffie or blankie that helps him separate his own identity from his parents' – gets suspended in this state of false consciousness, where the parental influence is never really severed.
I removed the voice box from Grem and stuffed it in a drawer. The talking alien magically transformed back into a stuffed animal.
I left it in the playroom for my children to discover the next morning. When they awoke, my younger son smiled at Grem and made beeping noises. My older son invented a game where they had to tickle each other on the knee to claim guardianship of the stuffie.
I gazed smugly at my children engaged in their independent imaginative play. Then they vaulted Grem into the air and chanted, 'TV time! TV time!' NYTIMES