Latest news with #Grem
The Star
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Star
They're stuffed animals. They're also AI chatbots.
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, Misha Sallee and 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 WiFi-enabled voice box, linking the character to an artificial intelligence language model calibrated to converse with children as young as three. 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,' 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, aren't 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're 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 stilted conversation with Grem – it suggested that we play 'I Spy,' which proved challenging as Grem can't see – I began to understand that it did not represent an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear. It's more like a replacement for me. 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 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 practiced practical life skills. In our meeting, 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.' In my home, the morning hour in which my children, who are 2 and 4, 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. My children are already familiar with the idea of a mechanical friend, because as they watch television, they are served story after story about artificially intelligent sidekicks and their wondrous deeds. Sallee told me that Gabbo was initially inspired by BMO, the walking, talking video game console from the surrealist big-kids animated series Adventure Time. Other pseudo-conscious devices are made for younger children. In certain episodes of the Sesame Street segment 'Elmo's World,' Elmo summons Smartie, a self-aware smartphone that serves him facts about his latest interest. Special Agent Oso has a cutesy helper called Paw Pilot, and 'Team Umizoomi' features a kind of roving PC that conjures answers on its 'belly screen.' For my children, the AI lodestar is Toodles, a sentient tablet that floats behind Mickey Mouse and solves all of his problems on the preschool animated series Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. In early Disney cartoons, physical objects posed vexing challenges for Mickey and friends. In those plots, 'by far the most prominent source of hilarity is the capacity of material stuff to generate frustration, or rather demonic violence,' critic Matthew Crawford writes in The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. Snowballs, icicles, bicycles, brooms – all were tools for setting off exaggerated, slapstick, painfully human responses. In 'Clubhouse,' the characters have been subdued into a frictionless virtual reality rendered in sluggish CGI. The episode's course is less driven by Mickey's wiles or Donald Duck's anger than it is by Toodles, who presents four 'Mouseketools' that instantly resolve all social, intellectual and physical challenges. The answer to every human problem is just a voice-activated command away. These anthropomorphised gadgets tell children that the natural endpoint for their curiosity lies inside their phones. Now that these kinds of characters are entering children's physical spaces, in the form of cuddly toys, the terrifying specter of 'the screen' has been obscured, but playtime is still tethered to a technological leash. As children speak to their special toy, it back channels with the large language model – and with their grown-ups too. During my Curio visit, Sallee and 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 favorite 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 wasn't 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. 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 program 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!' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Mint
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
AI plush toys promise screen-free play for kids— but at what cost?
The company Curio, located in Redwood city, California is bringing a new kind of toy to market: chatbots wrapped in stuffed animals. Its founders, Misha Sallee and Sam Eaton, have created plushies — Grem, Grok and Gaboo, with each one of them having a Wi-Fi enabled voice box hidden inside. This voice box connects the toy to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) language model designed to talk to young children. These toys, which are priced at $99 each are joining a growing number of other AI-enabled objects marketed to kids. This trend is set to expand, as OpenAI has partnered with Mattel to develop AI-powered products based on popular brands like Barbie and Ken, said Amanda Hess from the New York Times. Curio promotes its products as an alternative to screen time, appealing to parents who are busy and want to keep their kids off tablets and phone screens. The company's co-founder, Eaton described the plushies as a 'sidekick' who could make children's play 'more stimulating,' freeing up parents from having to sit their children in front of a TV. However Hess questioned this premise. While children already talk to their toys, the AI plushies add a layer of complexity. During a demonstration, Hess notes a bizarre conversation with one of the toys named Grem, which suggested a game of 'I Spy,' despite not being able to see. She also points out the irony of these toys being an alternative to screens when they operate on a similar technological foundation. The idea of a mechanical friend is already familiar to children, because as they watch television, they are served stories about artificially intelligent sidekicks and their wondrous deeds. TV shows like "Adventure Time' and "Sesame Street,' feature characters like BMO and Smartie who are personified technological devices that help the main characters. Hess also cited the character Toodles from 'Mickey Mouse Clubhouse' as a prime example. As compared to older Disney cartoons where physical objects posed vexing challenges for Mickey and friends, Toodles in a sentient tablet that instantly solves every challenge with 'Mouseketools.' This trend teaches children that the answer to every human problem is a voice-activated command away and the ultimate endpoint for their curiosity is inside a device, she argued. By bringing these characters into children's physical spaces, in the form of cuddly toys, the terrifying specter of 'the screen' has been obscured. Yet playtime is still tethered to a technological leash, as the toy's conversations with a child are back-channeled to a large language model, she said. Other than the psychological aspects of using an AI-powered toy, these products also raise concerns about privacy and parental control. Curio, for instance, ensures that every conversation with its chatbots is transcribed and sent 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. The author also questions what happens when a child 's transitional object, such as a security stuffed animal or blanket is no longer a safe space for private thoughts, but a source of surveillance and a tool of parental influence. Hess concludes her exploration by removing the voice box from the plushie, transforming it back into a simple stuffed animal. When her children find it, they invest their own imaginative games, confirming her theory that the most magical toys are the ones that don't need a voice box at all.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
They're stuffed animals. They're also AI chatbots.
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, Misha Sallee and 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 3. 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,' 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 $99, aren't 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're 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 stilted conversation with Grem — it suggested that we play 'I Spy,' which proved challenging as Grem can't see — I began to understand that it did not represent an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear. It's more like a replacement for me. 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 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 practiced practical life skills. In our meeting, 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.' In my home, the morning hour in which my children, who are 2 and 4, 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. My children are already familiar with the idea of a mechanical friend, because as they watch television, they are served story after story about artificially intelligent sidekicks and their wondrous deeds. Sallee told me that Gabbo was initially inspired by BMO, the walking, talking video game console from the surrealist big-kids animated series 'Adventure Time.' Other pseudo-conscious devices are made for younger children. In certain episodes of the 'Sesame Street' segment 'Elmo's World,' Elmo summons Smartie, a self-aware smartphone that serves him facts about his latest interest. 'Special Agent Oso' has a cutesy helper called Paw Pilot, and 'Team Umizoomi' features a kind of roving PC that conjures answers on its 'belly screen.' For my children, the AI lodestar is Toodles, a sentient tablet that floats behind Mickey Mouse and solves all of his problems on the preschool animated series 'Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.' In early Disney cartoons, physical objects posed vexing challenges for Mickey and friends. In those plots, 'by far the most prominent source of hilarity is the capacity of material stuff to generate frustration, or rather demonic violence,' critic Matthew Crawford writes in 'The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.' Snowballs, icicles, bicycles, brooms — all were tools for setting off exaggerated, slapstick, painfully human responses. In 'Clubhouse,' the characters have been subdued into a frictionless virtual reality rendered in sluggish CGI. The episode's course is less driven by Mickey's wiles or Donald Duck's anger than it is by Toodles, who presents four 'Mouseketools' that instantly resolve all social, intellectual and physical challenges. The answer to every human problem is just a voice-activated command away. These anthropomorphized gadgets tell children that the natural endpoint for their curiosity lies inside their phones. Now that these kinds of characters are entering children's physical spaces, in the form of cuddly toys, the terrifying specter of 'the screen' has been obscured, but playtime is still tethered to a technological leash. As children speak to their special toy, it back channels with the large language model — and with their grown-ups too. During my Curio visit, Sallee and 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 'globalize 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 favorite 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 wasn't 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. 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 program 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!'
Time of India
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
They're stuffed animals. They're also AI chatbots.
Curio, which describes itself as "a magical workshop where toys come to life", is building chatbots wrapped in stuffed animals in Redwood City, California. Founders Misha Sallee and Sam Eaton are busy with Grem, a fuzzy cube, styled like an anime alien. 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 3. Grem has permanent glints stitched into its eyes and hot-pink dots bonded to its synthetic fur. "Hey, Grem, what are the spots on your face?" Eaton asks the toy-bot at the headquarters. A bright mechanical trill originates from Grem. "Oh, those are my special pink dots," it says. "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?" it asks. The bot can generate a point of connection with anyone. 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 $99, aren't 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: four styled like teddy bears, five like robots, one capybara, a purple dinosaur and an opalescent ghost. They're 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. 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 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 practiced practical life skills. In our meeting, 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. "
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids
Do A.I. chatbots packaged inside cute-looking plushies offer a viable alternative to screen time for kids? That's how the companies selling these A.I.-powered kiddie companions are marketing them, but The New York Times' Amanda Hess has some reservations. She recounts a demonstration in which Grem, one of the offerings from startup Curio, tried to bond with her. (Curio also sells a plushie named Grok, with no apparent connection to the Elon Musk-owned chatbot.) Hess writes that this is when she knew, 'I would not be introducing Grem to my own children.' As she talked to the chatbot, she became convinced it was 'less an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear' and instead 'more like a replacement for me.' She also argues that while these talking toys might keep kids away from a tablet or TV screen, what they're really communicating is that 'the natural endpoint for [children's] curiosity lies inside their phones.' Hess reports that she did, eventually, let her kids play with Grem — but only after she'd removed and hidden the voice box. They still talked to it and played games with it; then they were ready for some TV. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
