Earlier this month, I highlighted the fact that the latest Samsung Smart TV can and will listen to your conversations, and will share the details with a third party in the post: A Very Slippery Slope – Yes, Your Samsung Smart TV Can Listen to Your Private Conversations.
Well a couple of weeks later, and we learn that Mattel’s latest high-tech Barbie doll will bring the “internet of things” right into your child’s playpen. From the The Register:
Toymaker Mattel has unveiled a high-tech Barbie that will listen to your child, record its words, send them over the internet for processing, and talk back to your kid. It will email you, as a parent, highlights of your youngster’s conversations with the toy.
If Samsung’s spying smart TVs creeped you out, this doll may be setting off alarm bells too – so we drilled into what’s going on.
The Hello Barbie doll is developed by San Francisco startup ToyTalk, which says it has more than $31m in funding from Greylock Partners, Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, True Ventures and First Round Capital, and others.
Its Wi-Fi-connected Barbie toy has a microphone, a speaker, a small embedded computer with a battery that lasts about an hour, and Wi-Fi hardware. When you press a button on her belt buckle, Barbie wakes up, asks a question, and turns on its microphone while the switch is held down.
The doll is loaded up with scripts to read, and one of these is selected depending on what the kid said. If the tyke shows an interest in a particular past-time or thing, the doll’s backend software will know to talk about that – giving the kid the impression that chatty Barbie’s a good, listening friend.
Crucially, the recorded audio of children’s voices (and whatever else happens to be going on around them when they push the buckle button) is kept on ToyTalk’s computers. This material is supposed to help Mattel and ToyTalk improve Barb’s scripted replies. It’s also good test data for developing the voice-recognition code.The ToyTalk privacy policy page, dated last April well before Hello Barbie was revealed this week, states:
When users interact with ToyTalk, we may capture photographs or audio or video recordings (the “Recordings”) of such interactions, depending upon the particular application being used.
We may use, transcribe and store such Recordings to provide and maintain the Service, to develop, test or improve speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence algorithms, and for other research and development or internal purposes.
We may make such Recordings available to the parent account holder and permit the parent account holder to share such Recordings with third parties.
By using Hello Barbie, parents agree to these terms. It’s not clear how long the recordings stay on ToyTalk’s systems.
You’ve been warned: Big Barbie is Watching You.
For related articles, see:
A Very Slippery Slope – Yes, Your Samsung Smart TV Can Listen to Your Private Conversations
Big Brother is Coming…To Your Brokerage Account
Retail Big Brother – Mannequins Are Now Using Facial Recognition Technology
Big Brother is Coming to Your Car
Mayor Bloomberg on Drones: “Oh it’s Big Brother. Get Used to it”
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Oh Dear Lord. Were is the Onion link. Please tell me this is a joke. It just has to be a joke. No time to talk to your kids, No problem. Let psyco Barbie do it for you. Hey Sally, Yes Barbie, Does Daddy have guns? Do Mommy and Daddy talk bad about the government?
Bam Barbie SWAT team to the rescue. I would like to think that no person in their right mind would knowingly buy something like this, but I am sure I am wrong.
Orwellian Barbie (aka Big Barbie)
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New creepy time super spy barbie. Doomed. Todays children are doomed. So happy I home school. Dont want my kids to even come in contact with someone who would own this kind of garbage. If my kids need something non human to talk to, they can yap at a chicken or a goat.
I’d think that there would be an interesting story to tell in the toys we give our children through the ages and how those toys correspond with the weltanschauung of each time. This one doesn’t surprise me anmore than this one-
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“OOPS! Someone forgot to take of their shoes. No flight to grandma’s funeral for you.”
I’d be interested in reading some of those conversations.
“Barbie, Ken said he wants to fuck you, but how come you don’t have a vagina?”
Wow, this is the creepiest toy ever.
Face it, we’re all just frogs in a pot with the heat being gradually turned up. Just like Germany 80-some years ago.
And with the new net neutrality fiasco, who knows how much longer we’ll even be able to share what’s going on? Remember the Stamp Act was designed to stop the colonists from spreading news via pamphlets back during the American Revolution? Repeat for the millennial crisis: make it difficult for anyone who doesn’t support the “official narrative” to share opposing points of view.
From Internet to Obamanet
Critics of President Obama’s “net neutrality” plan call it ObamaCare for the Internet.
That’s unfair to ObamaCare.
Both ObamaCare and “Obamanet” submit huge industries to complex regulations. Their supporters say the new rules had to be passed before anyone could read them. But at least ObamaCare claimed it would solve long-standing problems. Obamanet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken.
Full story: http://www.wsj.com/articles/l-gordon-crovitz-from-internet-to-obamanet-1424644324
How on earth do we keep allowing these things to remain “secret” until they’re passed??
Next up: Debriefing Barbie.
“Ok, Sarah, tell Barbie what mommy said about our Glorious Leader today. . . “
Say the wrong things around Barbie and it’s off to Room 101, folks!
The saddest part of all is that most of the sheeple won’t see this for what it is. The majority will see this as another wonderful step toward the all-connected world of tomorrow. This type of thing WILL be embraced and become mainstream. There is no stopping this technology. When the AI algorithms underlying toys of this type have had a few years to mature, the toy will then steer the child’s conversations, likes and dislikes in culturally approved directions. Another form of youth brainwashing is born! More control over society is always being planned. A detailed look at the companies providing the backing for this product would probably lead in some very interesting directions.
Once hacked, by you know who, the kids will be told, by virgin Barbie and her also ubiquitous mate, Ken,. to take moms dildo and dads porn DVD’s to the ‘teacher’ at school.
This is a very bad idea..who would finance a pedophiles dream to the tune of 30 million?