AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids
Offer AI-Chatbots packed in cute-looking hugs a feasible alternative to screen time for children?
That is how the companies that sell these AI-driven Kiddie Companions market them, but the Amanda Hess of the New York Times has some reservations. She tells a demonstration in which Grem, one of the offers at Startup Curio, tried to bind her. (Curio also sells a hug called Grok, without a clear connection with the chatbot of Elon Musk.)
Hess writes that this was when she knew: “I would not introduce Grem to my own children.” While she spoke with the chatbot, she was convinced that it was “less an upgrade to the lifeless Teddy bear” and instead “more as a replacement for me”.
She also claims that although this talking toy can keep children from the vicinity of a tablet or TV screen, what they really communicate is that “the natural end point for [children’s] Curiosity lies in their phones. ‘
Hess reports that she finally let her children play with Grem – but only after she had removed and hidden the voicbox. They still spoke with it and played games with it; Then they were ready for some TV.
