Services such as Apple Inc.’s Siri have for some revolutionized the way they interact with technology, replacing the need to type with voice controls, and users can even hold an basic conversation with the artificial intelligence service.

Apparently the feature is particularly popular with children, with the phone in some cases even becoming a toy of sorts that can hold a conversation. But with the technology firmly established and knowing that kids love it, wouldn’t it make sense to take the tech and put it in a toy?

That’s exactly what Mattel Inc., has done with its soon to be released “Hello Barbie.”

Hitting the stores this coming northern fall for $75, Hello Barbie is a Wi-Fi enabled version of the iconic doll according to The New York Times, which uses technology from ToyTalk Inc., to analyze a child’s speech and produce relevant responses.

“She’s a huge character with an enormous back story,” CEO of ToyTalk Oren Jacob told the paper. “We hope that when she’s ready, she will have thousands and thousands of things to say and you can speak to her for hours and hours.”

The new Barbie doll is said to be able to respond to what a child says to it with “thousands and thousands of things to say.” ToyTalk’s recognition system has also been calibrated to childrens’ speaking voices, including their turns of phrase, for example if the child was big on certain types of slang, or trendy words, the language processor will still be able to interpret that phrase, and even with time use similar words in the conversation.

Privacy Concerns

Hello Barbie records conversations it has with children so as to analyse them as part of the system that allows it to speak back to the child in a similar way, a feature that has privacy groups concerned.

“Is this going to be some creepy doll that records what is going on in your home without you knowing it?” Nicole A. Ozer of the ACLU tells the paper. “What is being recorded? How long is it being stored? Who is it being shared with?”

In a statement March 11th, a spokesperson for the Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood added “If I had a young child, I would be very concerned that my child’s intimate conversations with her doll were being recorded and analyzed…in Mattel’s demo, Barbie asks many questions that would elicit a great deal of information about a child, her interests, and her family. This information could be of great value to advertisers and be used to market unfairly to children.”

Privacy with children in a valid concern, and Mattel does need to come out and state that the data gathered won’t be used for such purposes, but likewise it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the technology to believe it can be done any other way; the system has to record and analyse for the personalization to take place.

If Hello Barbie works as promised, there’s every chance we could be looking at the hot toy for Christmas 2015.

photo credit: Barbie the Rocket Scientist via photopin (license)