When Mattel’s “Hello Barbie” doll was introduced at the 2015 Toy Fair in New York City on Feb. 16, many people considered the talking doll that could carry on a conversation with its owner a real innovation.
After all, with children as young as three or four years of age using iPads, and Mattel trying to reverse sinking sales associated with its flagship brand, a doll that could “speak” to children and give cute responses was the perfect answer to lagging profits and the toy could be labeled as educational.
But consumer activists think the WiFi-connected Barbie should more accurately be called the “eavesdropping Barbie.” Another advocacy group says the doll is just plain “creepy.” The CCFC launched a petition earlier this year asking Mattel to halt production of “Hello Barbie.”
CCFC’s executive director, Josh Golin talked to CTV News on Thursday. Golin wants to warn parents to keep their distance from the doll. He adds, “This is kind of the perfect storm of a bad toy.” He adds, “It raises a whole host of privacy and security concerns.”
CCFC argues that the WIFI-laden doll, equipped with a tiny microphone that’s activated when you press on her belt buckle, could act as a double agent, passing along personal information shared by your child for market research or other darker reasons.
“Children talk really intimately when they talk to dolls, they confide in them, they tell them their inner-most thoughts and secrets,” Golin said. “And those secrets are going to be stored on the cloud, they’re going to be listened to by live people.”
CBC News-Canada quotes one parent who is very suspicious of the talking doll. “Hello Barbie is pretty creepy and it would not be welcome in our house,” said Windsor, Ont., parent Mindy Terrington.
The technology behind “Hello Barbie”
The voice recognition software used in Hello Barbie was developed by San Francisco, California-based startup ToyTalk. Started in 2011, the family entertainment company has been a pioneer in the art of having conversations with cartoon characters.
On ToyTalk’s web page, the company says they have already created a number of apps for iPad, such as the Winston Show, which allow children and characters to have real conversations in a new dimension of make-believe. SpeakaZoo is an application where children can speak to the zoo animals. It’s available for iOS and Android devices.
So who are the “live people” listening to your child’s conversation on the web? The people at ToyTalk will be listening to their conversations. Of course Mattel and ToyTalk are adamant that your child’s conversations will not be used for nefarious purposes.
“All parties involved are prohibited from using the data to advertise to the child,” Tom Sarris, ToyTalk’s head of communications, told CBC News in an email. Mattel, on the other hand, refers everyone to their company’s privacy commitment.
Quartz printed an excerpt from Toy Talk’s privacy page, and their privacy notification is a bit more open-ended: 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.
ToyTalk also points out that those recordings may be shared with parents and third parties: We may share Recordings with Service Providers who assist us in providing the Service, developing, testing and improving speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence algorithms, or otherwise conducting research and development.
It’s hard to decide if parents will rally behind the “Hell No Barbie” movement. As recently as Thursday, tens of thousands of people have already signed the CCFC petition. CTV News says one woman made a very interesting comment that is relevant to what’s going on today. She wrote, “How would Mattel stop a hacker from intercepting those conversations and potentially exposing young girls to harm? Bad idea…”
