I'm just a Barbie Girl in a ChatGPT world

Toy giant Mattel has signed a deal with OpenAI to bring the tech industry's buzziest technology to the very youngest generation.

The partnership will see the maker of Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price toys use OpenAI in products it will release later this year. The goal is to make toys smarter and thus more attractive to kids, who will then presumably deploy pester power to loosen parents' purse strings.

"Each of our products and experiences is designed to inspire fans, entertain audiences, and enrich lives through play," said Josh Silverman, chief franchise officer at Mattel in a canned statement.

The release makes no mention of precise product plans, but one can imagine anything from games or apps using Mattel-branded copyrights alongside OpenAI technology, to actual physical toys with some kind of internet connection and a built-in link to ChatGPT.

One only hopes Mattel has done its homework on this, given the fiasco ten years ago with the Hello Barbie range. In 2015 Mattel teamed up with ToyTalk to build a Barbie that kids could talk to about anything on their minds.

Once the child pressed on Barbie's belt buckle, the doll would relay the recorded comments via Wi-Fi to the doll-maker's servers, which applied voice recognition technology. Mattel would send a signal back to the doll, triggering a pre-recorded reply, and parents would get a weekly or monthly email about what their offspring were discussing with their plastic pal.

Mattel didn’t use recorded conversations to push adverts at children, but to train an AI to recognize children's voices, which can be very difficult to achieve. Kids tend to use very unstructured speech and drop in the occasional nonsense word, which confuses computers.

Nevertheless the devices caused a bit of a storm among parents and educators who were a little freaked out by the concept. After researchers found security holes in the devices, they quietly disappeared.

• Hello Barbie: Hang on, this Wi-Fi doll records your child's voice?
• Mattel urged to scrap Wi-Fi mic Barbie after Register investigation
• Hello Barbie controversy re-ignited with insecurity claims
• Google, YouTube cough up $170m to make that trifling little thing about slurping kids' info without consent go away

Mattel has hopefully learned from that incident.

We've asked Mattel and OpenAI what data these future toys will use, who will have access to it, and how it will be stored. We'll update this piece as soon as they let us know.

The deal also sees Mattel corporate adopting AI across its business. Mattel said they have an agreement with OpenAI to do this, but didn't disclose for how long or how much it will pay.

"We're pleased to work with Mattel as it moves to introduce thoughtful AI-powered experiences and products into its iconic brands, while also providing its employees the benefits of ChatGPT," said Brad Lightcap, COO at OpenAI.

"With OpenAI, Mattel has access to an advanced set of AI capabilities alongside new tools to enable productivity, creativity, and company-wide transformation at scale." ®