Amazon announced last week the launch of "Create with Alexa", a new tool that allows children to create animated stories using artificial intelligence.
As of today, the service is available on supported Echo Show devices in the US.
To create a story, the boy or girl must say "Alexa, make a story", and answer her instructions, the company explained in its blog.
The media as part of the landscape and not as the center of attention.
Alexa for children. (Photo: Amazon)
First, the children choose one of three themes: "space exploration", "underwater" or "enchanted forest".
After that, choose the protagonist of the story along with adjectives such as "stupid", "happy" or "mysterious", choose a color scheme and of course, the music.
Alexa's sound and music generator generates relevant sounds from a huge library of instrumental pieces, harmonies and rhythms.
An AI-based music processing system ensures that all parts fit together in a logical way.
At the end of the process, the AI engine generates a five to ten line story based on the answers.
The story comes with a background image, animations, sound effects and music.
Users can save the story to their personal media gallery, and soon they will also be able to share it with others.
Amazon claims that the story will be different every time, even if the same child chooses the exact same directions.
"We envision a world where anyone can bring their ideas to life in the form of digital creations by using a few spoken words," said Ashan Bhatnagar, head of product for Alexa AI, "and Alexa will be there to help them as a partner in their creation."
How is Alexa better for kids?
Unlike existing systems for creating art using artificial intelligence, such as Stable Diffusion, Create with Alexa is aimed at young children and has built-in content filters that help prevent the creation of "inappropriate" stories, at least in American terms.
In doing so, Amazon actually provides an alternative solution for the use of mobile devices among the younger generation, and returns control to the hands of the parents.
In a post-traumatic country like Israel, it is not uncommon to see toddlers holding a smartphone in a stroller and 5-year-old children already going to kindergarten with it.
But this easy solution that has been so available to parents for a long time is not only dedicated to emergencies.
Is the child crying?
Is there YouTube, Zoom at work?
Tom the desert.
Just to have a minute of silence in the busy schedule we all face.
This thing is already well normalized and still, the common perception among parents and professionals is that the use of mobile phones should be postponed until as late as possible, and it is backed by alarming studies on the negative effects of too early exposure to online content.
The way I see it, when it comes to children and families, housing has three significant advantages that no other device has.
First, it is a device whose location in the house is relatively fixed.
A parent has to activate it before the child can use it.
He can stand on a dresser in the living room or on the kitchen counter and read a story, but they won't take him to bed or take him out of the house.
A bit like the old home phone.
Just this little thing should significantly reduce the children's screen time and establish itself as something that runs in the background but does not take the center of attention.
Second, since the entire content takes place according to the child's instructions, there is essentially no exposure to external content.
It is true that the AI brings its own interpretations, but the child's mental field is kept relatively free of influences.
In an era where dangerous trends in networks claim the lives of children and youth, there is nothing more significant than this.
Third, and this is the really big thing, as with any large-scale project, the most essential element is the data.
It is very likely that over the years we will see these works being used by professionals and parents as a therapeutic and research tool for emotional treatment of children and even for locating children with potential in various fields.
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Alexa facing forward
What all this means in the long run, if this Alexa project succeeds, is that Amazon will be a central partner, not to mention controlling, in building the narrative of the next generation.
Conspiracy buffs will tell you that Amazon is planning to take over your children's minds.
I say there is some truth in this, but things are much more complex than they seem.
Corporations gain power only when they succeed in meeting a fundamental need of many, many people, and when they do, they are rewarded with data.
This is not necessarily a bad or a good thing, it is simply how a global economy in the digital age works.
It's possible that in a few years Alexa will show commercials for children and then you will hear me speak differently.
But if we return to the ground, here and now, here is a product that, in my humble opinion, can revolutionize the way children consume digital content, so that it will be much more supervised and will buy healthier habits for the inevitable interaction of children with the world of content.
Marketing and digital
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Amazon
Alexa
artificial intelligence
Children
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