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Maybe for Ken is not good news, but for millions of young girls is an absolute novelty. Barbie speak. Technology has also contaminated the legendary doll of Mattel that in the fall will present the new model, Barbie Hello , with the word, at a price of $ 75. Looking for something that could revitalize a product that feels the weight of years Mattel has turned to ToyTalk , a company specializing in making talking toys.
“Chat with a device Mobile is a matter of course for those who have ten years – said the CEO Oren Jacob – much less for high school students. ” For this it is time to give the speech to the doll with the physique of the pin up that until now has spoken only by the imagination of children. Founded in 2011 thanks – the daughter of Jacob, seven, wanted to talk via Skype with his toys – ToyTalk produces solutions that enable children to weave complex conversations with puppets . In the case of Barbie the system analyzes the words of children to produce answers to tone.
“When the solution is ready we hope that Barbie will have thousands of things to say and can talk for hours with the girls” is the hope of Jacob. The system, however, is a bit ‘more complex and is creating some concern. Barbie, which connects to the Wi-fi , speaks with software behind which there is an algorithm that learns from the words of the child, remembers what she says and calibrates the tone to adopt. Discussions are then stored on the servers of the company.
And ‘the new frontier of the Internet of things that creates a problem of privacy. “A creepy doll that records what happens in our house without our knowing?” Asks Nicole A. Ozer , director of the technological area of ’ American Civil Liberties Union Northern California interviewed by New York Times . But Ozer has other questions. “What is recorded, how long it is kept, who can access or share this information?”. For its part, the company ensures that all the information recorded by the microphone of the doll will remain private and still some measures to protect privacy has been adopted.
Toytalk has developed a procedure that pemette parents to control in part the situation. A child under 13 can use the conversation only after a parent has given permission to be confirmed by mail. When children want to interact with a character must press a microphone button on the app as a walkie-talkie and parents have access to the recorded conversations of their child and can delete them.
However, all this seems not enough. The CCFC ( Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood) that seeks to protect children from advertising in their products has asked the stop of production new Barbie. Because in addition to the dialogue recorded there is also the influence that the doll can have on children. A study of the Georgetown University has compared two groups of children who used the same character. But while the first had available the puppet can say the name of the child over to the TV and favorite song, the second showed the same name and gave different directions. Then when the puppet he performed in a small test mathematical children who had the toy speaker reacted better than the other. It ‘just a test, but Sandra Calvert , Director of the Children’s Digital Media Center and Georgetown study author is convinced that the effects could be even more.
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