Aristotle is basically Amazon.com’s smart speaker, Echo, for the sippy-cup set. It consists of an HD camera and a voice-controlled conical tower, the size of a lava lamp, that can light up in different colors and contains a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi speaker that responds to spoken commands. (“Aristotle, play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”) It will start selling this summer for about $300.
Like the talking machines on HBO’s hit series Westworld, Aristotle is programmed with a backstory. Mattel’s mythmakers like to say it’s a distant descendant of the Greek philosopher. “My purpose in life,” it says in an engaging, even-keeled female voice, “is to help comfort, entertain, teach, and learn from you.”
Qualcomm processors power the device, and Microsoft programming helps it collect cribside data and respond to a baby’s needs. Aristotle can be programmed to launch into a lullaby, emit white noise, or turn on a night light to soothe a waking baby back to sleep. The monitor sends data on nap times and diaper changes to a corresponding smartphone app and, with permission, uploads it to the cloud. Partnerships with Target, Babies “R” Us, and other retailers speed Aristotle’s orders of baby supplies.
To extend Aristotle’s usefulness, Mattel has also built in developmental guessing games. The speaker can make an animal noise and prompt a toddler for the animal’s name, or determine the geometric shape on a flashcard held up to its camera and ask for the name of the shape. Aristotle flashes green for correct answers and red for mistakes. With help from Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, it can also retrieve answers to the endless pre-bedtime questions from a stalling child.
Mattel says the encryption built into Aristotle should keep its data safe, and customizable parental controls can limit its use for certain functions or at certain times to keep kids from ordering a million gallons of formula or asking dinosaur questions all night. The device is open to further partnerships with shopping, education, and entertainment apps, including Mattel’s own cross-branding. Fujioka says the company is working on products that incorporate the speaker, such as an interactive Hot Wheels track for which Aristotle will provide sound effects—the screech of tires, the roar of the crowd. “There are a bunch of very cool, crazy things coming,” he says.
During an otherwise challenging time for gadget sales, AI-powered home automation hubs have piqued consumers’ interest. Amazon’s Echo is the industry leader, capable of playing music, giving weather reports, ordering rides from Uber, and so on. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates Amazon has sold 5.1 million in the U.S. since the device’s debut in late 2014. Google Home is also battling for market share. Apple is working on a similar device powered by Siri. And Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg spent the past year building a personal AI assistant—named Jarvis, as in Iron Man’s disembodied cyberbutler—which now runs his home and regularly interacts with his 1-year-old daughter.
Victoria Petrock, an analyst with researcher EMarketer, says Aristotle is the first effort to tailor this kind of technology more narrowly. “They’ve found a niche,” she says. “It sounds like there will be a lot of uses for it, but also that it’ll raise a lot of tricky questions for parents.”
Mom and Dad might wonder, for example, about the consequences of their children spending their early years going to bed and waking up alongside an artificially intelligenttalking machine. Fujioka says Aristotle’s handlers at Mattel have read everything that’s been written about kids’ interactions with Alexa, Echo’s voice-assistant software. He’s aware of anecdotes suggesting that interactions with pliant AI can make kids bossier and says Mattel is working on apps that could help teach manners.
But a lot of it, he concedes, is new territory. “Honestly speaking, we just don’t know,” Fujioka says. “If we’re successful, kids will form some emotional ties to this. Hopefully, it will be the right types of emotional ties.”
The bottom line: Mattel’s kid-aimed, $300 smart speaker is due out in summer. The toymaker is developing complementary products.
Article Appeared @https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/baby-s-first-virtual-assistant