INTERACTIVE BARBIE
Mattel banks on high- tech doll
In a recent demonstration of its Internet- connected doll, Hello Barbie, a Mattel spokesperson greeted the souped- up version of the iconic doll by saying, “Welcome to New York, Barbie.”
Thanks to voice- recognition technology, Barbie was able to analyze that remark and give a relevant, conversational response: “I love New York! Don’t you? Tell me, what’s your favourite part about the city? The food, fashion or the sights?”
The company promises that the software will enable the doll “to listen and learn each girl’s preferences and then adapt to those accordingly.”
The interactive doll is slated to hit shelves in the fall, and Mattel is likely hoping it will help revive sinking sales of its flagship brand.
But a children’s privacy advocacy group is calling for the company to cease production of the toy, saying Hello Barbie might more accurately be called “eavesdropping ” Barbie. Because the doll works by recording children’s speech with an embedded microphone and then sending that data over the web, these advocates call the technology “creepy” and say it could leave children vulnerable to stealth advertising tactics. The Campaign for a Commercial- Free Childhood has launched a petition urging Mattel to keep the doll from hitting store shelves.
“If I had a young child, I would be very concerned that my child’s intimate conversations with her doll were being recorded and analyzed,” Angela Campbell, faculty adviser at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, said in a statement. “In Mattel’s demo, Barbie asks many questions that would elicit a great deal of information about a child, her interests, and her family. This information could be of great value to advertisers and be used to market unfairly to children.”
Mattel and ToyTalk, the San Francisco- based startup that created the technology in the doll, say privacy and security have been their top focus in developing Hello Barbie. In an interview, ToyTalk chief executive Oren Jacob stressed that the audio files it captures will only be used to improve the product, such as, for example, by helping the company build better speech recognition models for children.
In a statement, the company said that “Mattel is committed to safety and security, and Hello Barbie conforms to applicable government standards, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Additionally, Hello Barbie’s technology features a number of safeguards to ensure that stored data is secure and can’t be accessed by unauthorized users.”
The dispute underscores a tricky challenge for the toy industry, in which legacy brands are trying to figure out how to cater to children’s affinity for technology and gadgets while meeting parents’ expectations about privacy and security.
To chat with Hello Barbie, kids must press a button on the doll. ( The doll is still in prototype form, but at least for now the button is on Barbie’s belt buckle.) The doll is only “listening ” when that button is depressed. The audio recording then travels over a Wi- Fi connection to ToyTalk’s cloud- based servers, where that snippet of speech is recognized and processed. Barbie then makes an appropriate response.
Before this capability is enabled in the doll, parents will likely have to sign into an app, create an account and indicate via email their consent for the data capture.
But the Campaign for a Commercial- Free Childhood ( CCFC) is not convinced that these steps keep children safe.
“Kids using ‘ Hello Barbie’ aren’t only talking to a doll, they are talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial,” Susan Linn, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “It’s creepy — and creates a host of dangers for children and families.”
ToyTalk has said parents can opt to receive daily or weekly emails that allow them to access the audio files of their child’s conversations with Hello Barbie. Linn said she finds that option “troubling.”
“Children confide in their dolls,” she said.
But ToyTalk says that giving parents secure access to this information is part of its efforts to comply with regulations in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.