A host of startups are building robots and stuffed toys that can have full-fledged conversations with children, thanks to generative AI.
Six-year-old Sophia Valentina sits under a decorated Christmas tree as she unwraps her present: a tiny lavender-colored robot, whose face is a display and whose body is embedded with a speaker. “Hey Miko,” Sophia says, and the gadget lights up with round eyes and blue eyebrows.
In early December, Sara Galvan bought Miko Mini, a $99 robotic companion embedded with in-house AI models as well as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, with the hopes that it would help homeschool her daughters. Over the last month, Sophia has used Miko to solve math problems, listen to princess stories and ask questions like “how is Christmas celebrated,” Galvan said. “They begin to learn self-guided learning, which is huge for us with homeschool and helps expand their curiosity and their minds,” she said.
Miko, which can also play games like hide and seek, is part of a growing group of pricey GPT-powered robots rolling into the toy market. Some AI toys are touted as a screen-free form of entertainment that can engage children in conversations and playful learning, like Grok, a $99 AI plushie that can answer general questions (not to be confused with Elon Musk’s ChatGPT competitor Grok, though the toy Grok is voiced by his former girlfriend Grimes). Others claim to offer additional features beyond storytelling and learning activities. There’s Fawn, a $199 cuddly baby deer intended to provide emotional support, and Moxie, a $799 turquoise-colored robot that can recite affirmations and conduct mindfulness exercises. These robotic pals are designed to not only help children grow academically and improve communication skills but also teach them how to deal with their emotions during times of distress.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/01/20/your-childs-next-playmate-could-be-an-ai-toy-powered-by-chatgpt/?sh=4379811d37e9
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Six-year-old Sophia Valentina sits under a decorated Christmas tree as she unwraps her present: a tiny lavender-colored robot, whose face is a display and whose body is embedded with a speaker. “Hey Miko,” Sophia says, and the gadget lights up with round eyes and blue eyebrows.
In early December, Sara Galvan bought Miko Mini, a $99 robotic companion embedded with in-house AI models as well as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, with the hopes that it would help homeschool her daughters. Over the last month, Sophia has used Miko to solve math problems, listen to princess stories and ask questions like “how is Christmas celebrated,” Galvan said. “They begin to learn self-guided learning, which is huge for us with homeschool and helps expand their curiosity and their minds,” she said.
Miko, which can also play games like hide and seek, is part of a growing group of pricey GPT-powered robots rolling into the toy market. Some AI toys are touted as a screen-free form of entertainment that can engage children in conversations and playful learning, like Grok, a $99 AI plushie that can answer general questions (not to be confused with Elon Musk’s ChatGPT competitor Grok, though the toy Grok is voiced by his former girlfriend Grimes). Others claim to offer additional features beyond storytelling and learning activities. There’s Fawn, a $199 cuddly baby deer intended to provide emotional support, and Moxie, a $799 turquoise-colored robot that can recite affirmations and conduct mindfulness exercises. These robotic pals are designed to not only help children grow academically and improve communication skills but also teach them how to deal with their emotions during times of distress.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivastava/2024/01/20/your-childs-next-playmate-could-be-an-ai-toy-powered-by-chatgpt/?sh=4379811d37e9
Forbes Daily Briefing shares the best of Forbes reporting on wealth, business, entrepreneurship, leadership and more. Tune in every day, seven days a week, to hear a new story. Subscribe here: https://art19.com/shows/forbes-daily-briefing
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TechTranscript
00:00 Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Tuesday, January 23rd.
00:05 Today on Forbes, your child's next playmate could be an AI toy powered by ChatGPT.
00:14 Sarah Galvan's six-year-old daughter sits under a decorated Christmas tree as she unwraps
00:19 her present, a tiny lavender-colored robot whose face is a display and whose body is
00:25 embedded with a speaker.
00:27 Her daughter, Sophia Valentina, says, "Hey, Miko," and the gadget lights up with round
00:33 eyes and blue eyebrows.
00:36 In early December, Galvan bought Miko Mini, a $99 robotic companion embedded with in-house
00:43 AI models, as well as OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, with the hopes that it would help homeschool
00:50 her daughters.
00:52 Galvan said that over the last month, Sophia has used Miko to solve math problems, listen
00:57 to princess stories, and ask questions like, "How was Christmas celebrated?"
01:03 Galvan said, "They begin to learn self-guided learning, which is huge for us with homeschool
01:09 and helps expand their curiosity and their minds."
01:11 Miko, which can also play games like hide-and-seek, is part of a growing group of pricey GPT-powered
01:19 robots rolling into the toy market.
01:22 Some AI toys are touted as a screen-free form of entertainment that can engage children
01:27 in conversations and playful learning.
01:30 For example, Grok, a $99 AI plushie that can answer general questions, though this is not
01:36 to be confused with Elon Musk's chat GPT competitor, Grok, though the toy Grok, by coincidence,
01:42 is voiced by his former girlfriend, Grimes.
01:45 But that's another story.
01:47 Other AI toys claim to offer additional features beyond storytelling and learning activities.
01:52 There's Fawn, a $199 cuddly baby deer intended to provide emotional support.
01:59 And there's Moxie, a $799 turquoise-colored robot that can recite affirmations and conduct
02:05 mindfulness exercises.
02:08 These robotic pals are designed to not only help children grow academically and improve
02:13 communication skills, but also to teach them how to deal with their emotions during times
02:17 of distress.
02:19 Fostering social and emotional well-being is one of Miko's intended functions.
02:24 This according to CEO and co-founder Sneh Vaswani, who participated in several international
02:29 robotics competitions before starting his company in 2015 and launching the first iteration
02:34 of AI companion Miko in 2017.
02:38 He told Forbes, "Our goal is to help parents raise kids in the modern world by engaging,
02:43 educating and entertaining children through multimodal interactions with robotics and
02:48 AI."
02:49 Vaswani told Forbes that he has sold almost 500,000 devices to date across more than 100
02:56 countries and expects to cross $50 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending in March
03:01 2024.
03:02 His Mumbai-based startup has raised more than $50 million and was last valued at about $290
03:09 million, according to PitchBook.
03:11 Vaswani said that Miko is trained on data curated from school curriculum, books and
03:16 content from partners like Oxford University Press, and is built using proprietary technology
03:22 including facial and voice recognition, recommendation algorithms and a natural language processing
03:27 layer.
03:28 The bot is programmed to detect different accents and provide educational content catered
03:33 to the geographic region where it's sold.
03:36 The company has also teamed up with media giants like Disney and Paramount, allowing
03:40 them to publish their content on Miko.
03:43 Vaswani told Forbes, "There could be a storytelling app from Disney or a Ninja Turtles app from
03:49 Paramount.
03:50 It's like a Netflix plus an iPhone on wheels given to a child."
03:54 However, like AI in general, while it sounds very futuristic and cool, the new technology
04:01 is far from perfect.
04:03 While generative AI is capable of spinning up make-believe characters and content, it
04:08 tends to conjure inaccurate responses to factual questions.
04:12 ChatGPT, for instance, struggles with simple math problems.
04:16 And some of these AI toys have the same weakness.
04:19 For instance, in a recent video review of GPT-powered robot Moxie, it incorrectly said
04:24 100 times 100 is 10.
04:27 Paolo Perjanian, CEO and founder of Embodied Inc., the company behind Moxie, said that
04:33 a "tutor mode" feature was announced in early January and will be available in the robots
04:38 later this year.
04:40 Perjanian said, "Academic questions, paired with environmental factors like multiple speakers
04:46 or background noise, can sometimes cause Moxie's AI to need further prompting."
04:52 Stefania Druga, a researcher at the Center for Applied AI at the University of Chicago,
04:57 with a word of caution with regard to young people, said, "If the model invents an answer
05:03 that's not correct, that can create a serious misconception, and these misconceptions are
05:08 much harder to correct."
05:11 For full coverage, check out Rashi Srivastava's piece on Forbes.com.
05:16 This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
05:19 Thanks for tuning in.
05:20 [music]