Ai-powered Stuffed Animals Are Coming For Your Kids

In Brief

Do A.I. chatbots packaged wrong cute-looking plushies connection a viable replacement to surface clip for kids?

That’s really nan companies trading these A.I.-powered kiddie companions are trading them, but The New York Times’ Amanda Hess has immoderate reservations. She recounts a objection successful which Grem, 1 of nan offerings from startup Curio, tried to enslaved pinch her. (Curio besides sells a plushie named Grok, with nary evident relationship to nan Elon Musk-owned chatbot.)

Hess writes that this is erstwhile she knew, “I would not beryllium introducing Grem to my ain children.” As she talked to nan chatbot, she became convinced it was “less an upgrade to nan lifeless teddy bear” and alternatively “more for illustration a replacement for me.”

She besides argues that while these talking toys mightiness support kids distant from a tablet aliases TV screen, what they’re really communicating is that “the earthy endpoint for [children’s] curiosity lies wrong their phones.”

Hess reports that she did, eventually, fto her kids play pinch Grem — but only aft she’d removed and hidden nan sound box. They still talked to it and played games pinch it; past they were fresh for immoderate TV.

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