The NY Times recently ran a story about a 3-year-old girl’s relationship to Alexa. The precocious three-year-old asks Alexa everything from what the weather is to how old Alexa is. The same parents who used to kvell over how smart their children were because they could read before they went to kindergarten are now regaling in stories of cute things their kids say to Alexa. And a study from MIT found that 80% of kids believe voice controlled things like Alexa would never lie.
Welcome to the world of voice assisted parenting. Amazon hasn’t lost sight of that fact that it has a kids audience. Alexa skills now include The SpongeBob Challenge from Nickelodeon, Sesame Street from Sesame Workshop, and Amazon Storytime. As a matter of fact, the Alexa Skills Store has more than 1,500 skills filled with apps for children including bedtime stories, funny noises and jokes.
Alexa is not alone. Siri’s Learning Works for Kids teaches kids as young as four years old to set up calendar reminders and to-do lists. Google has kids chanting “OK Google” (Google doesn’t even bother giving its voice service a human name). And Google just introduced Family Link with partners including Disney and Sports Illustrated for Kids to keep the young ones entertained.
Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Google -- they’ve all figured out their place in the family dynamic, offering kids a chance to explore the wonders of voice activated personal assistants just like mom and dad. Having your kids chat with these smart speakers will become every bit as normal a household activity as the chore wheel.
Aristotle is a Horse of a Different Color
And yet, when Mattel tries to build the same technology -- in many ways more attuned to the needs of kids -- they’re cut off at the knees. Mattel was strong armed into cancelling its version of a household voice activated aid, Aristotle. The decision to kill Aristotle before it ever came to market was a reaction to kids’ privacy experts’ concerns that Aristotle would become a substitute robotic parent and might make kids’ information public. The Campaign For a Commercial Free Childhood penned a letter asking for Aristotle to die. Senators including Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, also wrote that Aristotle would invade the sanctity of family privacy.
The only difference between Mattel’s Aristotle and the others is that Mattel is a toy company. Toy companies have been held to a different, higher standard, when it comes to interacting with kids. This makes it hard for companies like Mattel to compete against the others.
Aristotle is a bit different than the others. For one, it was designed to be a family companion that would live in the kid’s room. Part baby monitor (an add-on video camera could stream videos of baby to the parent's smartphone), part shopping device for parents (Aristotle could order more diapers from Target, Toys ‘R’ Us and others, not just Amazon), part lullaby and story book reader, part learning activities, part nightlight, Aristotle took the basic capabilities of other voice activated assistants and tweaked them to make the product family-centric. Parents could make a voice note about a diaper changing or a feeding. Mattel even added some etiquette into Aristotle, asking a kid to remember to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when asking Aristotle for something. And Aristotle could grow with your child, moving from lullabies to homework help as they aged. Mattel made headlines once before when Talking Barbie allowed a child to converse with a cloud-based Barbie and keep a recording of those sessions. Talking Barbie was deemed too creepy for sale. COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act, makes it difficult for companies like Mattel that market to children to collect any personal information. On the other hand, it’s fairly trivial for companies like Amazon and Google to set up some minimal parental consents. Aristotle might not have been a smashing commercial success, but it was a chance to show that a voice activated device could help the entire family. It’s a shame that a grey area in an old law (COPPA) differentiates between services like Alexa where kids’ participation is encouraged, versus products like Aristotle that are built to service kids and their families. After the Talking Barbie harpooning that Mattel took a few years ago, I can’t blame them for fleeing the market, but I’m sorry that a new generation of parents won’t get to experience a device made expressly for their needs.