Generative AI is in phones, laptops, and now even kids' toys. This is Po, the AI story bear. The first AI teddy bear with a smile and sparkly eyes turns into a mindless zombie. It reads a story created by Open AI's Chat GP T 40. The toy is expected to hit retail stores in August. It will cost $50. Here's how it works: You use the app. Kids choose the characters, objects, settings, and themes for the story they want the bear to create. It's actually the Chat GP T that's generating the short tail on the backend. It goes through a filter and then back to the app, connected by Bluetooth to the bear in a world where dreams have become reality. This is one of the stories that come preloaded on this sample bear. It's a story of a ninja fighting nightmare monsters in Candyland. Currently, the bear can tell stories in more than 20 languages. You can save stories and play them offline with the click of a button on his ear. Now, I was given this early sample of Poe to try out at home with my kids, and I'm told that the voice I'm experiencing isn't the bear's final voice. But I wanted to show you this and let you know how it all works. The final voice is provided to you in partnership with 11 laps. This is a company that creates generative AI voices, and I noticed that just sitting here filming this video, I can hear Marina the brave mermaid swiftly swimming through a hallway full of glowing tanks and weird machines, a nurse on roller skates sipping a milkshake, a prince riding a bike, and a cowgirl enjoying Asian noodles. Here's a sample of what the company gave me of what the final Poe will sound like, dragon gold. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Everwood, there lived a brave and clever girl named Lily. She had bright red hair and sparkling green eyes, and she always wore a cape made of feathers. Now, after playing this with my kids, I thought about a lot of things. As a parent, it's weird that I don't know what an AI machine is going to say to my kids. But all the stories we made were kind of quirky. The worst part was that it got a little creepy at times. I mean, there's also the option for creepy characters like zombies. And in one story, the zombies had their heads knocked off during a fight. A baseball player swung a medal bat and knocked the zombie's head off its body. Zircon grimaced and raised his hand. But in the final version, parents can block certain monsters or make themes scary if they want. The shuttle was haunted by the ghost of York Under the Bridge, an insane astronaut who died in an explosion years ago. Dw A ha ha C Ghost Under the Bridge. Let's make a story right now and show it to you. Okay, let's pick an adventure story. Okay. Let's have mermaids in this story. Creepy mummies, robots. Yeah, let's have robots. Robots. Bad guys. Let's have jelly beans and farts. Why not? And let's have teleportation. It's set in a secret lab. Okay. Let's make up a story. Okay. We're ready. Deep at the bottom of the ocean, where the water sparkles with glowing fish and hidden treasures. There lived a mermaid named Coral. One day, Coral received a mysterious message in a bottle. It said, “I need help in a top-secret lab. Urgent.” Suddenly, the door behind her slammed open and a giant robot stepped in. It dared to enter my lab. A voice like thunder roared. Coral swallowed her fear. “I'm Coral. I received a message asking for help. What's going on?” she replied. So this AI-generated story exists in the literary uncanny valley, with some random twists and turns. As the story progresses, it can get harder to understand. Or maybe the words are a bit weird sometimes, not the kind of vocabulary you always see in children's stories, for example. Luckily, she can untie the cosmic knot that doomed her kingdom to endless suffering. Did you understand? I didn't understand much when I was using it. The kids seemed a little confused about what was going on. I ended up saying a lot. One of the things I struggled with was that during testing, some of the voices that the AI made didn't have the pauses and rhythm that you hear from a voice actor. Maybe it gets a little easier as the voice gets better. But of course, this reminds me of my childhood. I grew up with the first animatronic talking toy, Teddy Ruxpin. And this bear played audio from a cassette tape, sang a book to go with it, and had a team of writers, musicians, and voice actors. Parents knew what stories they were buying in this adventure series about friendship. Now the art that made Teddy Ruxpin special was exported to a machine in the cloud. That's when he realized the horrible truth: this wasn't just a robot, it was some kind of evil alien construct that had come out of a space nightmare. Wait, that's a story. There's a good side to it. There are activities here where kids can practice listening, and they get a random story each time through the app. They have some control over what they generate. It creates everything from a flock of ghostly seagulls to a tornado of fried chicken. But it was a tremendous flash of light and to no avail. The zombie hooker died. At one point, the kids were trying to make a story by selecting all the characters and all the objects, so it felt like Poe had gone gay for my kids. So sometimes the kids start thinking about what they could make super crazy. Why not do it all? But if you're going to do it all, go for it. With Poe, it's like trusting a stranger to tell your child a story. But that stranger is a robot that other technology companies trust. So it seems Apple doesn't mind using Chat BT to tell a child a story. Because during Apple's June Worldwide Developers Conference presentation, an executive said that a useful use of Chat BT is to tell a 6-year-old a bedtime story about butterflies. Po Bear employs the same idea. You set limits on the theme and length of the story you can choose, then send it to another AI voice program, and the story is played through a soft bear that requires batteries. Now that we're in the age of cute AI, it's very interesting. This toy is made by a company called Skyrocket. The company makes funny talking toys that use the latest technology and sensors to make kids laugh. But the big toy manufacturers have been working on this problem of using AI and toys for a few years now. I've seen it at the big toy shows I visit. There are robots that utilize generative AI to chat with kids and answer questions, and some of them are pretty expensive at this point. And when I go to these industry events, there are panels that look at how to use generative AI in toys. I mean, a year ago, the CEO of Vtech said that AI storytelling teddy bears will be commonplace by 2028. Well, now in 2024, it's right there with us. The voice of this potest is still in development, but I expect it to evolve quickly. Let me know what you think about all of this in the comments below. You know AI is the shiny new toy for all tech lovers right now. But will your child's shiny new toy have AI? I'm Bridget Carey and you can subscribe to follow our adventures as we continue to play in this new age of AI.
