By: Gary Rusak

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a part of everyday life. Our smartphones suggest how to complete an email or text, and recommend what we should watch, read and order over the course of a day. ChatGPT dominated conversations in 2023, and the year also saw both Microsoft and Elon Musk’s X unveil ambitious AI strategies. The technology was even the subject of an executive order from the US president outlining a framework for AI adoption, including five principles to keep it safe and ethical.

Suffice it to say, AI is here. No industry is immune to its charms, and toy companies are rapidly adopting the technology for both consumer-facing and back-end applications.

Behind the scenes
“I think the first place you are going to see AI in action is really in toy creation—the workflow of production,” says Robin Raskin, founder of The Virtual Events Group.

A longtime industry insider, Raskin says the technology is already embedded in the supply chain and production side of the industry. She cites a recent panel at New York’s Toy Fair, where a representative from China’s mammoth online retailer Alibaba Group highlighted the company’s use of AI.

“If they are facing a supply-side issue, they will use AI to create an RFP to send to the right vendors,” she explains. “They have everything done with the touch of a button.”

Raskin sees the adoption of this technology at the clerical and administrative level mirroring the seismic effects that previous technological revolutions have had on the workforce. “What we are telling people in the industry is that your staff should be practicing their AI smarts everyday. They need to reskill now, or they will get left behind.”

Sydney Wiseman, VP of brand development and creative strategy for WowWee, says AI is already a big part of the toyco’s workflow. The company is currently using AI throughout its back-end processes, such as assisting with organizing, clerical work and early concept art.

“It has been incredibly helpful,” says Wiseman, adding that she uses the technology to give the company’s design team a clearer picture of nascent toy concepts.

“It makes you more resourceful, but it doesn’t give you final products,” she notes, stressing that there is no replacing the human element that has gone into making WowWee a major player in the toy industry for the past 35 years.

“I think soul is what makes creative people creative,” she says. “The art that is being produced with these AI tools doesn’t have soul.”

For this reason, as well as concerns about kid safety and security, WowWee has not integrated AI capabilities into any of its products… yet. “When it comes to kids, considering COPPA and privacy protection, it’s too much at the moment,” says Wiseman. “I don’t think we know enough about where it’s going to use it for a kid-focused product.”

However, she concedes that over time and with proper security measures in place, an AI-infused robot from WowWee seems inevitable. “We are defi nitely looking into how we are going to use it in our robots in the future.”

ROYBI
California-based ROYBI is already much further down the road toward developing an AI robot for kids in the educational market.

Founded in 2019, the company has specifically designed its same-name robot to promote language acquisition, using a voice recognition AI model that makes it fl uently conversational. The robot’s primary purpose is to deliver more than 1,000 language lessons. It currently retails for around US$150 and is widely available online.

“It talks to the child in short stories,” explains Elnaz Sarraf, ROYBI’s founder and CEO. “It then asks the child to repeat some of the vocabulary. It is focused on improving communication and assisting language acquisition.”

The robot leverages a mixture of cloud computing and proprietary technology to generate appropriate responses to kids’ questions.

With a target demographic of three- to seven-year-olds in mind, ROYBI has spent a significant amount of time and resources to ensure that the most stringent safety guardrails are in place. Its development team has engaged a deep roster of privacy experts and legal consultants to assist in creating an ironclad safety infrastructure. ROYBI has even created its own technology to moderate content by employing a number of sophisticated algorithms.

“It’s housed on Amazon Web Services, which has really good security,” says Sarraf. “We are not a giant corporation, so we have to really work together with others to protect the information.”

To improve safety and add convenience, the next generation of ROYBI’s bot will tighten up its security net even more by entirely cutting out the cloud component, she adds. “The voice recognition will be done on the device itself, not in the cloud. It will be amazing for security and allow the device to be used without internet access.”

2-XL

First introduced in the ’70s, the newest version of Mego’s 2-XL robot friend uses AI to have engaging—and safe—chats with kids.

New York’s Mego is also harnessing the power of AI to create a robot friend for young children. The company has partnered with LA-based tech fi rm D1srupt1ve to reimagine Mego’s classic 2-XL educational robot that was fi rst introduced in the late 1970s.

Thanks to AI, the new version has shed its educational roots and is now focused on engaging kids in casual, friendly conversation in a startlingly realistic way. “It’s very nuanced and can pick up different contextual conversations,” says Nathaniel Hunter, founder of D1srupt1ve. “It will become a close companion and friend, without the child realizing that their parents have complete oversight.”

After years of development, 2-XL is ready to offer fellowship and entertainment to kids around the world, Hunter says. “It’s conversational like a human, and it’s built with long-, mid- and short-term memory. It’s completely revolutionary.”

The robot’s personality and interactions are unassailably positive—it’s designed so that any nefarious prompting elicits only a constructive response and a polite suggestion to change the topic, while the device also notifies parents about any potential issues or dangers. In fact, parents are privy to every interaction the 2-XL has with their child, and can easily set up their own conversational parameters and red-flag topics.

Cognizant of both the regulatory and moral responsibility inherent in creating a kid-friendly AI, Mego has earmarked considerable resources for implementing hundreds of layers of data moderation and safety algorithms.

“It’s simple—if you don’t protect the kids, you don’t have a product,” says Marty Abrams, CEO of Mego. “There cannot be a crack in the armor.”

The new 2-XL soft-launched in December at Macy’s and FAO Schwarz in the US, and has distribution deals set up in 32 countries (it speaks dozens of languages). It will retail for about US$150.

Abrams, who made his name in the toy industry with licensed action figures, says the robot is a perfect vessel for a long-term, licensable and merchandisable IP—the first that has AI at its very core.

“We have built a whole world around the 2-XL,” he says. “It’s an incredibly deep narrative, and [the toy launch] is really just the beginning.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s February/March 2024 magazine issue.