The musician technology/2023/12/14/grok-grimes-curio-toy/”>Grimes has developed an interactive stuffed animal with ai for children who can converse and “learn” the personalities of their owners. Grimes and toy company Curio created the toy line in partnership with OpenAI, as first reported Washington Post. Grimes, who voices all three toys, is also an investor and advisor on the product.
The three plush figures are named Gabbo, Grem and Grok; They should not be confused with the artificial intelligence chatbot called Grok, owned by Elon Musk, Grimes' former partner. Curio told the Mail that the ai plush toy Grok and the chatbot Grok are not related. The Grok toy is an abbreviation of the word “Grocket”, which Grimes said he coined due to the fact that his children with musk He grew up around SpaceX rockets. in a 2022 publication in XThe musician stated that her two-year-old son could relate to Musk “dark rocket design” and often followed his father at engineering meetings.
All three characters have unique personalities that Curio built on the OpenAI language model. “Grok is a friendly rocket who loves to dance and doesn't know how to fly. Grem is an alien obsessed with the color pink. Gabbo is a curious, Pinocchio-like figure who is always looking for new friends. The idea here is that we can create fun and lovable personalities in every new character we release,” Curio co-founder Misha Sallee wrote in an email to The edge.
According to Sallee, the toys currently have one mode, a “sweet, friendly, teasing personality that is appropriate for children,” but the company is working on functionality in beta that allows parents to set more preferences.
According to the US Patent and Trademark Office database, Curio filed an application to register the name Grok on September 12, 2023, although the application is still pending. Still, it seems like they beat Musk by more than a month – xAI did not apply for a trademark for the Grok chatbot until October 27, 2023.
The collaboration between Grimes and Curio was sparked by a post on X, according to Curio's website. In April, user X Roon aware about a future in which “every last object” will be “intelligently animated,” including children's teddy bears. Grimes felt compelled to reply to the position.
“This would be great if it were safe. Being a parent is very difficult, I would love for my children to be hanging out with something equivalent to the mind of a cultural ship in a teddy bear haha, that's probably too much to ask for…” wrote the musician.
In a conversation between Roon, Grimes and Sallee posted on the toy company's blog, the trio discuss the potential for ai toys to influence human behavior as well as reduce their reliance on screens.
“I really feel like this is also the first step in reducing screen time as much as humanly possible. (…) I think that when you take away the screens, the human mind tends to function much better and people are not trapped in a state of constant doses of dopamine that incapacitate them in other aspects of their life. life, and I feel like we've had like a decade where everyone has screens as a really important part of every day and many, many hours of their day,” Grimes said.
For now, the ai toys will require a Wi-Fi connection to operate, although the founders hope to one day contain all the hardware and software in the toy. The toys will come with an app and provide parents with a written transcript of any conversations their child has with the toys. The company told Mail that the toys will not store any voice data and that the storage of the transcripts complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Transcripts will be deleted after 90 days.
The ai toys are now available for pre-order for $99 each. on the Curio website. Those who order by December 17 will receive a golden ticket to Christmas, giving recipients a taste of what's to come. The first orders are expected to ship in early 2024.
