already gone. anywhere else to get it? how hard is it to reprogram?
Give your kid your phone with the chatgpt app realtime active on it, they'll love it
Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
131–140 of 183 posts
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#132[flagged]
All of the magic of the 1-900 numbers of the 80s and 90s with zero of the regulation. What could possibly go wrong?
btw, https://www.santasmagicaltelephone.com/privacy goes to a 404. Amusing.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#133This is why everyone not in technology hates us. I'm a technologist. I get it, on some level it's kinda cool that we have the technology to bring this thing into the world, and so of course one wants to build it and make it real. Breadboarding it as a fun weekend project is one thing. But making it exist as a product sold on Walmart.com is another. What is the point, exactly? I mean this as a serious question to thin…
How is roleplay with this object different then other toys? If you get lost in a D&D game is that bad because the world isn't real? Getting lost in Myst and making Doom WADs was a joy I have always been trying to recapture. I am constantly looking for a way to do that for others. What do you think of my take here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575175 ? These 'LLM Role play' toys have hit a real fun spot with…
> How is roleplay with this object different than other toys?
Traditional role play is driven by the child and their imagination, and is essentially free of constraints. This is driven by the technology, follows a narrow script, and only allows for a single mode of engagement. Not saying that makes it good or bad, but they're clearly 2 different modes of play.
> If you get lost in a D&D game is that bad because the world isn't real
D&D is fundamentally a social activity (by definition, you can't play D&D alone)...
> Getting lost in Myst
...enjoying a piece of art built by a creative team with an artistic vision...
> making Doom WADs
... an open ended, constructive activity that exercises various skills and that gives you something to share/show for it.
Do you really not see how all of the above are fundamentally different from interacting with this black box that pretends to be something it's not (a human voice), is fundamentally extractive because of the technology it runs on (pay more for more time with it), not to get into the fact that a) the data gets siphoned off to a corporation with its own profit motives and b) there is absolutely 0 guarantee that the simulation can't go off rails?
> These 'LLM Role play' toys have hit a real fun spot with my kids.
Coca-Cola and McDonald's hit a real fun spot with kids as well. This on its own is a weak argument of value.
Clearly playing with this for a bit isn't going to be catastrophic for the child (although $99 for 60 minutes of play, with pay-for-more beyond that point, is a pretty darn steep asking price, if you ask me - and if the child enjoys it, it means they will be begging their parent to cough up more money for more time - a pretty poor success case for a toy. Normally once a toy is bought, infinite time can be spent with it with no further financial transaction).
Is it desirable to build a world where kids spend more time with this category of toy over others (in effect priming them for being an AI girlfriend/boyfriend app subscriber a few years down the line)?
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#134Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#135[flagged]
So he should just eat the cost that will add up over time, which is an unsustainable business model? Plenty of people buy subscription-based services, so I think 'everyone hates' means you actually hate it.
It's a great product that you can just ignore and not buy and the subscription model is told to you up-front, so there are no surprises.
I think it's a great use of 2025 technology.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#136I really, really hate this. Not only do I generally dislike Christmas as this "Santa Worship", it is cheap plastic, pay to use and generative AI slop. It also could have been just an App. It also is profoundly anti-social. I understand that all toys are in some economic sense "useless", but even the child in me hates this. As an additional thought, how do you protect the privacy of the children using this? I personally have a guess.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inference is always getting cheaper, so my hope is that restrictions like this can go away in the future. I totally understand giving it a 'B'. But I promise you that I came at this project with sincere hope that I can build something that brought more joy then it cost into this world. I have it at home and I think it's worth the money. My 5 year old uses it and the recordings I got from it I will keep forever. * San…
> Seeing kids role-play with LLMs and especially when they hallucinate is a lot of fun. I think this is kinda fucked up
Why? It’s probably just speech to text failing.
It reminds me of using early Windows. The unexpected behaviors of the software was what was fun.
Maybe not something everyone finds enjoyable.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#138This is why everyone not in technology hates us. I'm a technologist. I get it, on some level it's kinda cool that we have the technology to bring this thing into the world, and so of course one wants to build it and make it real. Breadboarding it as a fun weekend project is one thing. But making it exist as a product sold on Walmart.com is another. What is the point, exactly? I mean this as a serious question to thin…
That's feels like such a luddite take. 50 years from now AI powered toys will be so ubiquitous and common to people, they will barely blink. Just imagine how people must've failed against the first electronic toys 80 years ago, or Pokémon 30 years ago. Ask yourself... if this makes you depressed, what exact kind of new technology would make you happy?
My father put together Legos as a child, as did I and as will my children. Toys do not exist to satisfy some inherent agenda of technological progress, they exist to entertain children. Why you think we would need a LLM for that is baffling.
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#139Moral implications of LLM aside, this is an always-online, subscription-based toy that will eventually turn into a brick (unless the parent is an HN-er). I find it really sad that this kind of toy is sold in stores.
My hope is that the toy gets people interested/exposure to the idea.
Then the curious will open up the device/try to DIY. Lots of voice ai providers and microcontroller media code is open source!
Re: Show HN: AI toy I worked on is in stores
#140This post is eliciting different feelings for me.
1. Congratulations on getting a product into a major chain’s distribution network. That is a feat and is something to be proud of.
2. Do I think this product should exist? No. There are services that do this already, the only thing different is making it standalone. I fear it’s just another toy that will sit on the shelf and eventually contribute to the e-waste problem.
3. The capitalist in me thinks I would have also done subscriptions and “buy more minutes”, but in practice I don’t think I would have been able to execute on that.
4. Confusing to see a “build your own” in the same breathe. Are you a part of the Mr. Christmas team that built this? Or just contracted to build it based on your experience in hardware?
5. Were you really hooked? Hooked on the technology stack? Or hooked talking to Santa? Do you have kids that you built it for?
Many thoughts rattle around in my head on this one.