Mattel urged to scrap Wi-Fi mic Barbie after Register investigation Privacy activists are urging Mattel to axe its Hello Barbie doll, which sends recordings of children's voices across the internet for voice-recognition analysis. The improbably proportioned doll is fitted with a small embedded computer, a microphone, a speaker and a Wi-Fi interface. When the toy's belt buckle is pressed, …
Mattel's servers don't hold the conversations Hello Barbie records, ToyTalk does, and the startup has stated explicitly that the audio will never be used for advertising purposes.
...adding, "We're a startup company, we don't need the millions and millions that advertising to children will bring us. Trust us, suckers! Muahahahaha!"
For those who are conspiracy nuts: Blame the NSA, CIA as a way to spy on everyone.
But that's not all.
When the parents away, they could use Big Data to get more information on the children and families and then brainwash the kids by having Barbi talk to them in their sleep.
"The SF upstart says it has its eyes on a larger prize: developing an accurate voice recognition system for children."
So, they targeted a group of children who are almost guarenteed to be all girls and get the voice samples for free instead of paying people to bring their children in to make recordings of conversations in controlled and guided situations.
From a technical standpoint, it does have one advantage over the controlled and guided situations.
That is that voice recognition will get better at recognising particular accents, abbreviations, rambles, and other things we tend to say day-to-day, but would be less likely to say in a lab environment.
It would mean an end to things like;
Me: Siri, where can I buy a roll of linoleum?
Siri: I'm sorry, did you want to buy a roman, and only one?*
*Apologies to Billy Connolly for stealing one of his older gags.
"Can someone please explain WTF this guy is talking about."
Soothing psycho-babble to lull you into a (false) sense of security and trust with their product.
Advertisers pay the big bucks to get their spiels and press releases tweaked just right to enhance consumer credulity.
Nuanced responsiveness and being a caring person is when you don't feed them gruel or thrash them to within an inch of their life to shut them up like our parents did to us but stick them in front of the telly or give them the tablet.
Am I doing this parenting thing right?
My daughter loved her Barbie. But she hated (and still does) everything pink. Any relative who dared buy her or her doll anything with pink in it was in for a rough time.
When we lived in the US during her 'barbie' period she was branded as strange by the other childern of her age. Hers was the only Barbie in biker Clothes... (made by yours truly)
Like her parents she rides a motorcycle (a Ducatti 995). Her girls have grown up with a Meh attitude to Pink.
Marketing departments should be lined up against a wall and sprayed pink until they promise not to do it again.
Given that this is supposed to be a 'friend' to little girls, and they are who will be paying attention, I guess these little girls should ignore the voice and go for the breasts? Or did you not realise that some of the commentards you are addressing were female? But when I see quiptard posts such as this, I think 'another chap who has difficulties with the laydeez.'
A nice little ad hominem attack and I feel better!
> I guess these little girls should ignore the voice and go for the breasts? Or did you not realise that some of the commentards you are addressing were female?
So now lesbians don't exist? What an assumption! How sexist!
> But when I see quiptard posts such as this, I think 'another chap who has difficulties with the laydeez.'
Ditto, re your response!
:-p
Egregious example of wifi being used irresponsibly.
I'd equally condemn ISPs for handing out wireless routers like candy. I've seen installations where wireless was used within inches of a desktop computer -- a simple ethernet cable would be faster and not interfere with those who actually need a wireless link.
And so many routers end up in landfill as users move flat or change ISP.
This post has been deleted by its author
I dunno, I saw an advert for an awesome MicroMachines military base on TV when I was a kid that I didn't even know existed. I talked about it with my parents, and some pocket money saving combined with a few relatives chipping in for Christmas meant I got it a few months later, and for me it was the best toy ever! Pretty sure I still have it in the loft.
I used to fight huge pitched battles on the living room floor, using a blanket with books under etc to create hills/valley. In short, it gave me a huge amount of fun, with total play time probably measured in weeks and gave me opportunities to exercise my imagination to come up with ways to incorporate it into different scenarios.
If I hadn't ever seen that advert as a ~8 year old, that's a whole load of very happy memories that I wouldn't have had.
I guess the difference though was that the advert (20 something years ago) wasn't very sophisticated, no CGI or funky graphics and clearly showed children playing with the toy so it was clear what it was and what its capabilities were.
When I was a kid my little sister had a doll with a cassette player in it and a mouth that moved so it could tell stories and sing songs. It didn't take long before me and my brother popped a Guns n Roses tape in and had it singing welcome to the jungle.
I'd love to know just how much of Mattel's server time was spent on teenage boys trying to get Barbie to say something a bit rude.
I'm happy with a talking bottle, but I prefer Alice's version
Pint, natch.
The Real reason Mattel is releasing WIFI Barbie is to entrap parents and others who might be abusing their children, or saying or doing things that their children would not normally reveal. Of course little Janie will tell her Barbie anything.
That's the kicker though, who knows what your kid will say?
While protecting children is a noble undertaking, somehow this whole marketing idea is just plain repugnant.
HSBC has voice-recognition analysis software strapped across many of it's service lines - they don't tell you exactly that they are using it.
I've been having great fun with it. If you have music playing in the background it messes up and the Squaddie from Sri Lanka, Mumbai, Manila or one of hundreds of sweatshop cubicles asks you turn the music down.
A steady tone also blocks HSBC voice snooping. One Squaddie got exasperated so I asked him what his problem was and he then told me about their system.
On another occasion I used voice-changing software and a spectrum analyser to determine my vocal sound characteristics which were then used so my long suffering personal assistant, using the voice changer, could emulate me.
We called the help line, and sure enough the software was happy. During the call I slowly faded from the emulated sound to her own voice and only afyer 3 or 4 minutes of female conversation did he figure she was not me!
So much for high tech HSBC.
Despite their apparently laudable protection and safe use of collected data, it's start ups like this that the likes of Google tend to buy up. What protection will the data have then?
On another note, we all remember the occasional news stories of Boots, Kodak and other photo processors reporting "suspect" images to the police. Will anyone at ToyTalk actually be listening to any of this to confirm the speech recognition success rate? What will they do if they hear "suspect" comments from a child to their "friend"?
Mattell just announced in its latest press release that it was withdrawing its Hello Barbie doll, which sends recordings of children's voices across the internet for voice-recognition analysis
It Updated its press release with the following Statement
" In Conjunction with Intel Marketing and Development Department We will be upgrading all Hello Barbie doll's
with their Latest Soc Processor and We will Re-Release this Doll under the New Brand "" Hello Gwendy ""
This post has been deleted by its author
Let's say that a child starts telling the doll about abuse. Does the company which recorded the conversation now have a legal responsibility to report it?
If so, would the government have a de facto right to then "monitor" all such recordings?
I'd call that a slippery slope but, really, it's just all straight down. There is no slope.
If you look at CCFC's material, you will see that they do not claim that the recording are stored on *Mattel's* computers. And I quote from http://commercialfreechildhood.org/action/shut-down-hello-barbie:
"Hello Barbie" transmits the recordings over the Internet to cloud servers. Mattel’s technology
partner ToyTalk processes the audio with voice-recognition software.
That said, whether they are stored on Mattel or Toy Talk servers is a distinction without a difference. As for Toy Talk stating "explicitly that the audio will never be used for advertising purposes," that assertion is worth the non-paper it's printed on.
Meeting or exceeding COPPA is another red herring, since COPPA only prohibits collection of PII; it says NOTHING about capturing the conversations of children...and anyone else near the the microphone implanted in "Stasi Barbie" (credit to Germany's Stern newsmagazine).
Children of Barbie owning age don't have 'intimate thoughts'. They think like children. A lot of their ideas about the world, how it works, relationships and all that are immature but that's the point of being a child -- you're learning. (....and you should be doing most of this from your parents....that's what they're there for).
I don't think this would make a nice toy for a child but I don't see it as quite the menace its made out to be. (The way people are reacting to this you'd think it was sending subliminal "Kill Your Parents" messages to the child.) I've never been a great one for giving girls dolls -- they exist but my daughter was much more interested in practical things at that age and I don't think she was atypical. (Boys tend to be more interested in what happens when you microwave Barbie...so the idea of 'playing' with one has a different meaning for that gender).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
