Technomancy: OpenAI Partners With Mattel To Bring Interactive AI To Toys, Experts Worried About The Ramifications And Mental Development
"Our work with OpenAI will enable us to leverage new technologies to solidify our leadership in innovation and reimagine new forms of play.”
Animatronic toys with pre-recorded messages via drawstrings, buttons, voice and other sensory activation are nothing new. But it was inevitable that artificial intelligence would make its way into toys
In June, toy company Mattel announced an agreement with OpenAI to integrate AI with some of Mattel’s toy lines.
In a press release, Mattel stated: “The agreement unites Mattel’s and OpenAI’s respective expertise to design, develop, and launch groundbreaking experiences for fans worldwide. By using OpenAI’s technology, Mattel will bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences with an emphasis on innovation, privacy, and safety.”
“As a central part of this collaboration, Mattel and OpenAI will emphasize safety, privacy, and security in the products and experiences that come to market,” Mattel added.
In a separate release published by OpenAI, they said “Mattel aims to reimagine how fans can experience and interact with its cherished brands, with careful consideration to ensure positive, enriching experiences.”
Mattel CFO Josh Silverman said in a statement:
“Each of our products and experiences is designed to inspire fans, entertain audiences, and enrich lives through play. AI has the power to expand on that mission and broaden the reach of our brands in new and exciting ways. Our work with OpenAI will enable us to leverage new technologies to solidify our leadership in innovation and reimagine new forms of play.”
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap added:
“We’re pleased to work with Mattel as it moves to introduce thoughtful AI-powered experiences and products into its iconic brands, while also providing its employees the benefits of ChatGPT. With OpenAI, Mattel has access to an advanced set of AI capabilities alongside new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale.”
Mattel has a myriad of brands and franchises in its portfolio, including big names such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, UNO, Monster High, Polly Pocket, and Barney, among others.
Neither company at the time revealed any immediate plans, but did tease that “their first product is expected to be announced later this year.”
Silverman told Bloomberg at the time that the product would be “across the spectrum of physical products and some experiences.”
Last month, The New York Times reported on a start-up called Curio, a talking plushie that was trained on OpenAI's API and interactive Discord conversations. They currently cost $100 and the voice recordings come from Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend Claire "Grimes" Boucher.
However, as Futurism pointed out, there are some privacy concerns about if the plushies collect data from conversations conducted with the plushies.
In an interview with Boucher posted on the Curio site and pegged to the company's launch announcement in late 2023, the AI-enthused artist said that the toy she designed, Grok — no relation to her ex's supremely bigoted chatbot — was trained on OpenAI's API and interactive Discord conversations.
That statement, and others on Curio's official site, don't take into account a strange caveat found in the company's privacy policy acknowledging that Microsoft's Azure Cognitive Services, OpenAI, Perplexity AI, and the parental verification platform Kids Web Services may all "collect or maintain personal information from children through the App or Device." As the NYT notes, that runs counter to the company's claims that it doesn't retain kids' interactions for anything other than parental review in the toys' apps, and we've reached out to Curio to ask what all that is about.
Besides privacy concerns with this new wave of AI-augmented toys, there also comes the issue of childhood and neurological development problems that could arise.
In a piece for IEEE Spectrum, Marc Fernandez, chief strategist of the "human-centric" AI company Neurologyca, wrote of the many different issues that could arise with children who play with these toys.
Fernandez wrote (excerpts):
Children naturally anthropomorphize their toys—it’s part of how they learn. But when those toys begin talking back with fluency, memory, and seemingly genuine connection, the boundary between imagination and reality blurs in new and profound ways. Children may find themselves in a world where toys talk back and mirror their emotions without friction or complexity. For a young child still learning how to navigate emotions and relationships, that illusion of reciprocity may carry developmental consequences.
Real relationships are messy, and parent-child relationships perhaps more so than any other. They involve misunderstanding, negotiation, and shared emotional stress. These are the microstruggles through which empathy and resilience are forged. But an AI companion, however well-intentioned, sidesteps that process entirely.
Over time, those interactions can flatten a child’s understanding of what it means to relate to others. If conflicts are neatly resolved or avoided altogether, if every emotion is met with perfect affirmation, children may lose the opportunity to practice one of the most important developmental skills: learning to connect with people who are not programmed to go along with them. Real human interactions may begin to feel too slow, too inconsistent, or too challenging by comparison with AI interactions.
For many parents, the fear is that an AI toy might say something inappropriate. But the more subtle, and perhaps more serious, risk is that it might say exactly the right thing, delivered with a tone of calm empathy and polished politeness, yet with no real understanding behind it. Children, especially in early developmental stages, are acutely sensitive to tone, timing, and emotional mirroring. Children playing with AI toys will believe they’re being understood, when in fact, the system is only predicting plausible next words.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the Public Citizen advocacy group, said Mattel should renege on this deal as this latest venture could seriously impact children’s health.
“Mattel should announce immediately that it will not incorporate AI technology into children’s toys. Children do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play.
“Endowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children. It may undermine social development, interfere with children’s ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm.
“Mattel should not leverage its trust with parents to conduct a reckless social experiment on our children by selling toys that incorporate AI.”
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
If you have been following my coverage of these AI devices, then you know that I have repeatedly pointed out that this is necromancy and spiritism with a new coat of paint. Now it’s technomancy.
Deuteronomy 18:10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, [11] Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. [12] For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
Isaiah 8:19 And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? [20] To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
Zechariah 10:2 For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd.
The ramifications this will have on children will be detrimental. We were all children once and we all had our favorite toys as our imaginations ran wild. Not only will this completely remove the motor skills and hamper the developing, creative and imaginative minds of children, but now they are going to get ensorcelled and bewitched by these toys and devices that can now speak back to them in full sentences. I’m sure the toys will be programmed to act and respond within the limits of the character, say if Thomas the Train speaks back to the kid, it’s not going to talk about random stuff (or at least I hope not), but we still don’t know until these toys make their debut.
Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
Remember when we used to go to Build-a-Bear Workshop at the mall? Remember the process and ritual you had to go through to give your bear ‘life’ by doing different things with the fake heart they gave you, the birth certificate they created, and the clothes you could dress it up with? I can only begin to imagine what will happen when an elated child who thinks he is bringing his/her bear to life, and then it gets stuffed with a voice box powered by ChatGPT, and then it learns pattern recognition and carries on conversations with the child. Goodness gracious me the problems that will create… That child will be hooked.
Kids will drop their old toys for the new ones that converse with them.
If Mattel is doing this, you can expect other companies such as LEGO or Hasbro to do this; Hasbro which has deals Star Wars, Marvel, GI Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony, Furby, Magic The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, Monopoly and more.
I imagine also that many adults will like this addition. We’ve reported twice already this rise in “kidults,” adults who are still buying up toys and playing with them, or for nostalgia, trading and reselling, or just straight-up because they haven’t grown up. Toy sales for children have been steadily going down annually, but toy sales are climbing for adults.
Nevertheless, this is not a good trend we are seeing with AI toys. It was only a matter of time.
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On one of his missionary journeys, the apostle Paul visited Athens, Greece, where he said he witnessed “the city wholly given to idolatry,” and who were “too superstitious” and worshipped a plurality of gods and deities, though the people acknowledged that there was still one God above all that was a mystery to them. When questioned by the philosophers …
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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No telling what AI will tell little Johnny or Suzie to do when those AI toys speak, and no doubt they will all have a wireless connection. Sadly instead of the Chucky doll doing the dirty work it will be encouraging and telling the kiddies to do it and HOW TO DO IT.
Another tool in their toolkit of global genocide.
They will be training up a child in the way they should ***NOT*** go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it. What they don't know is that the children will be raptured with us and they will have no more little soldiers to train