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"Hello Barbie" Listens To Children Via Cloud

Posted by samzenpus on from the can't-talk-now-the-doll-is-listening dept.

jones_supa writes For a long time we have had toys that talk back to their owners, but a new "smart" Barbie doll's eavesdropping and data-gathering functions have privacy advocates crying foul. Toymaker Mattel bills Hello Barbie as the world's first "interactive doll" due to its ability to record children's playtime conversations and respond to them, once the audio is transmitted over WiFi to a cloud server. In a demo video, a Mattel presenter at the 2015 Toy Fair in New York says the new doll fulfills the top request that Mattel receives from girls: to have a two-way dialogue. "They want to have a conversation with Barbie," she said, adding that the new toy will be "the very first fashion doll that has continuous learning, so that she can have a unique relationship with each girl." Susan Linn, the executive director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has written a statement in which she says how the product is seriously creepy and creates a host of dangers for children and families. She asks people to join her in a petition under the proposal of Mattel discontinuing the toy.

11 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Should A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.... by Art+Popp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...be a book or a doll? In an age where Internet is thick on the ground, no contest.

    So, will a weak-AI owned by a for-profit company inspire little girls to have this conversation:

    "Mom! The Raspberry Pi 2 is out! It's got four ARM7 cores! My 3D printer would print a pair of ruby slippers in under an HOUR! Please!"

                or this one?

    "Mom! If I want to be a size zero, I need Kellog's Brand Nutrigrain Bars!"

    1. Re:Should A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.... by kheldan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      We should be so lucky as to live in a world where something like the YLIP really existed, even with all the conflict and problems in The Diamond Age.. but we don't live in that world. We live in a world where it would just blather on about nonsense, meanwhile everything the little girls say will be analyzed by market researchers for better ways to profit from them, and likely have Barbie say things to indoctrinate little girls into being 'better consumers' (read as: PESTER MOM AND DAD TO BUY YOU MORE STUFF) and for all we know brainwash them into being who-knows-what. Then there's the possibility of someone hacking into them and making Barbie say obscene things or things intended to mislead little girls into doing something horribly, horribly wrong, or who knows what. The hell with shit like this, make it go away. It's not the technology that's bad, it's the fact that you can't trust corporations or anyone else with it these days. In fact let's get rid of Barbie entirely, it's a shitty concept that's at the root of all sort of malodorous crap concerning little girls and their development anyway.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  2. commercials and young kids by jbolden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I remember when my daughter was about 2.5-4 commercials were unbelievable effective. Even those commercials that targeted the mother watching with the kid had an impact and my daughter would often get upset we didn't have the right products. I'd love to just see a ban on advertising for kids under 10, and public financing.

    1. Re:commercials and young kids by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OR, you know ... good parenting, not allowing them to watch TV except when appropriate

      OR you know ... teaching your kids about how commercials work, trying to get them to buy useless toys and crappy "food" products.

      Why did you allow your kids to be bombarded with commercials at an age where they couldn't cope?

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:commercials and young kids by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Life is about grey and tradeoffs.

      Good parenting is about knowing the tradeoffs and finding a solution that doesn't require you into compromising "compensating advantages" and getting "Upset" daughters (have them). TV was and is Optional. I chose to give up some conveniences for the sake of raising my kids better than the marketers wanted me to raise them.

      At age two - three, there is NOTHING on TV worth getting a brat at the store. Read them a book. Play with them in the sandbox. Teach them YOUR values, one of mine was, "you're more important to me than plopping you in front of a TV for the next three hours".

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  3. adult v child by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How come it's creepy with Barbie but not with siri, google, smart tvs, xbox kinect, or the myriad of other things that constantly monitor us when we think we are alone?

    1. Re:adult v child by mjwx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They're creepy too. It's worse when you're bugging children's playtimes, but we shouldn't accept any of those things in our lives.

      Often I find kids will eschew high tech toys in favour of a simple cardboard box. I gave my nephew a simple electronic drum kit for Christmas (it was to help with developing his co-ordination and to give him better musical tastes than his parents, so there was some thought into the gift) but he spent the entire day running around with the box it came in and having a ball. You wouldn't have been able to pry that box off him with a crow bar.

      You dont need to get high tech toys for kids, they'll enjoy lego, blocks, matchbox cars and the like just as much as I did when I was a kid. Hell, one of the best things you had to play with was a large refrigerator box.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    2. Re:adult v child by cazzazullu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I gave my nephew a simple electronic drum kit for Christmas

      As a parent, and speaking for most parents in the world, I wish upon you a house full of confetti and glitter, a sick goat locked up in your car, and from now on you're only allowed roughspun wool underwear.

      --
      int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
  4. Re: Hello, Talky Tina by Skidborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Funny how "positive" in this case seems to mean simply "more like me".

    --
    Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
  5. Re:Asking Mattel to make toys more ethical?????? by ewibble · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Men are told they can't get into child care, ok not because they, stupid but because they are not capable of controlling themselves.

    Ever heard the sayings:
    Men can't multitask?
    Men don't ask for directions?
    what about this article that described how women better at certain tasks:
    http://www.livescience.com/470...
    or this one https://www.americanexpress.co...

    I have never thought women where less smart than men, in fact I was of the opinion that the where smarter.

    Men are often portrayed in media as beer swilling, sex crazed, idiots that can't be pried away from watching sports.

    To reference the Simpsons, which was mentioned in the last thread, rank the family in order of intelligence.

    My guess would be:
    Lisa, Marge, Maggie, Bart, Homer.

  6. Re:WE ARE SLASHDOT by anagama · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is marked funny, but think about it for a minute. Our computers, phones, tablets -- even watches -- are collecting way more information than this Barbie is and yet how many people think these ubiquitous machines are creepy? Not many. The lesson here might be this: the shape of the surveillance device doesn't make it creepy -- what it collects is what makes it creepy. Oddly though, very few people are creeped out by their own phone.

    Two conclusions based on "shape irrelevant":

    1) Barbie, phones, computers etc. etc. have become extremely creepy surveillance devices (this is where I am, which is depressing, because I've loved technology for so long).

    2) Barbie, phones, computers etc. etc. are surveillance devices and surveillance is totally not creepy -- just don't care.

    To mix and match 1 & 2 though, making barbie creepy and siri not, is inconsistent and illogical.

    --
    What changed under Obama? Nothing Good