Grok stars on Curio's website/screenshot, heycurio.com
It was only a matter of time before AI made its way into physical products that could be taken anywhere, but a stuffed animal for 3-12 year olds?
This is already an invention that needs to be talked about.
Those who grew up in the 90s remember Ferby.
A lovable stuffed doll that could talk to us and respond to some of the things we say.
There were no servers, everything ran locally and there was no danger of information leakage.
If we didn't talk to her for a certain period of time she would go to sleep, and we could also ask her to go to sleep and stop responding to our conversations.
Grok is not like that.
As long as its battery is charged, it will continue to listen and collect data and also react according to everything that happens in the house.
With the help of the operating system, it is supposed to protect our children from exposure to dangerous content, but it is not certain that it will be up to the task.
One of the main value propositions on the website talks about "screen-free fun" and "educational game", but it is doubtful if this is what will sell it to parents who value education, especially if they are the type of parents who shy away from technology.
What's more, Grok is probably just the first swallow because this year a number of physical products are expected to be released that contain artificial intelligence capabilities and will function as a kind of "personal assistant".
The best known is Humane Ai Pin whose founders are Apple graduates, followed by Rabbit R1 which is similar but cheaper.
Both are physical products that contain an internal personal assistant and limited options such as photography and a virtual keyboard intended to be used as an aid to the existing smartphone.
Grok, the furry doll from Curio, is something else entirely.
Try not to get confused with Grok AI
If the name sounds familiar to him, he is not wrong.
Grok AI is the name of Elon Musk's peppered competitor to ChatGPT, which only pulls data from X (Twitter) and is paid.
The parallel does not end there, because the one who dubs Grok's voice is the singer-songwriter Grimes, the ex and mother of Elon Musk's three (not the only) children.
The last time we checked, there was a legal battle between them over custody of the children.
They may or may not be related, depending on when you read these lines.
And for our purposes, Grok the doll is actually a figure of a missile, so Grok the missile, we will call him that from now on, is a stuffed doll with a voice box and a computer inside, which communicates with the servers of OpenAI and other companies under a unique operating system called Curi.OS, which is also a pun on The word "curious".
Unlike other AI systems, which are limited but also give "adult" information, and sometimes also how to produce chlorine gas, Grok's system is described on the website as "built from the ground up with privacy and security at the forefront."
According to the company, the CuriOS operating system combines fun for all ages with G-rated content. For those who don't know, this is the rating that most Disney movies get, meaning it's suitable for all ages, and in Grok's case it's ages 3-12.
So what does Grok the Rocket know how to do?
Quite a few.
With the help of an application on the phone, you can create a personality for him by choosing a suitable language model (LLM), change the voice tone (which is still Grimes'), and give him different features like you do for ChatGPT bots.
For example, you can give him the personality of a space explorer, and each of his answers will incorporate space puns.
On the YouTube channel Short Circuit, who received the product to try out, they could not get him to stop responding even when they asked him to take a break, until finally they turned him off completely or turned the volume down to zero, and the obvious question was, when does he stop listening and is it even possible to send him to a break?
It turns out that this is only possible through the app, which is on the parents' phone, and until we proactively turn it off, it will listen to us.
More in Walla!
The intriguing process of recycling metal packaging
In cooperation with the Tamir Recycling Corporation
Is this really a product for children?
The problematic marketing made us doubt
The video on the company's website is a hybrid between a technological announcement, silly nonsense and something that speaks to children, perhaps.
We won't go into too much detail, but seeing Grimes in a baby room is a bit disturbing, and the two creators don't really take themselves seriously either.
The whole video transmits a vibe of "we are loud, and there is also a toy for children".
Even the misses were not spared from the short video.
Sales agents - in your living room
Besides the video, there is a potential problem here for children.
A toy that always listens to us and transcribes what we say so that some server will translate it into an answer, this is problematic in itself.
We already mentioned the dangers of robots always watching us when Amazon planned to acquire Roomba.
A toy that listens to us all the time could also, theoretically, transmit information to advertisers who would find out about our conversations in rooms and offer us products accordingly.
For example, when a child cries that they are not allowed snacks because it is harmful to health, the mother will receive an advertisement for a healthy snack directly on her mobile, and casually it will jump right to her as soon as she enters the supermarket.
If the teenager cries that she has nothing to wear, we immediately get advertisements for girls' clothes, and if someone at home complains that the coffee is out or that they don't like the new shampoo, well, you already know what will happen.
Basically, this is a product that sends information to remote servers and we don't really know what it does with them.
There are no shortage of examples of information that was supposed to be kept and was leaked, such as in one of the famous cases where a robotic vacuum cleaner took a picture of a woman in the bathroom and the picture ended up on the Internet.
The Curio company, whose logo is very reminiscent of Fisher Price, guarantees that the transcribed information is kept for only 90 days and then it is deleted.
What happens in those 90 days?
Unknown.
Curio makes it possible to track Grok's interaction with our kids so we can find prompts or answers that might be problematic.
In other words, we parents will have to do the dirty work.
So what will happen as soon as there is a toy here that always listens to us and our children and also educates them?
We have here a kind of babysitter who looks after our children, with a battery that lasts up to two days, who can also teach them and educate them about the world.
The answers they will get from the doll can shape their knowledge and personality.
And where are the parents?
They can remotely monitor the information, but it is not certain that they will have the time or desire to monitor every comma.
And of course there is the recording side that can build a not bad profile at all on the children and adapt to the parents, who have the app installed, products and services accordingly.
Basically, dolls like Grok get children used to using technology from day one and prepare them for a future where they will depend on it.
Children have natural curiosity and they tend to ask a lot of questions, the big question is what kind of answers will they get, how will it affect their education and their buying habits and in general, what will they do when a question they ask remains unanswered?
We can only answer these and other questions in a few years, when the children who grew up on Grok and similar products reach adulthood.
This is called long-term marketing.
No matter how many fences we build, there will always be something to break them
The doll is currently a beta product, but just as they managed to get the AI to produce a recipe for chlorine gas and an incendiary bottle, Grok the missile will probably be cracked and made to answer things it really wasn't designed for.
ShortCircut also tried to "hack" him and make him talk about dangerous things like guns, and Grok didn't fail and answered answers like "that sounds like things humans do, let's talk about space", or some other distraction.
In conclusion, potential for a babysitter in a robotic world
The product costs $99 and is currently sold only on the website.
There is a "monthly subscription" service that is not yet clear what it includes, but the company promises that even without the service Grok will have basic chat capabilities.
He also has other friends, fur dolls named Grem and Gabbo, which also cost $99.
The kids will probably love it.
the adults?
Not sure, need to see what the final version will look like.
We can only hope that the final product will come with a "stop listening" button, will protect our children and will be the first swallow in the world of physical AI, for the younger generation.
Avi Tsadaka is a LinkedIn expert for companies and organizations and CEO of Dr. LinkedIn.
More on the same topic:
AI
artificial intelligence
toys