generative AI is in phones. It's in laptops, and now it's in children's toys. This is Po, the AI story bear, the first AI teddy bear with a swo smile and a twinkle in his eye. Forming him into a Mindless zombie, it reads AOW stories created by chat GPT 40 from OpenAI, and this toy is hitting retail stores this August for $50. Here's how it works: using an app, kids pick the characters, the objects, the setting, and themes of the story that they want the bear to create. And really, it's chat GPT that's generating a short tail on the back end. It's going through filters and then back into the app, which is Bluetooth connected to the Bear. Once Upon a Time, in a world where dreams came to life, there lived a young ninja girl named Sakura. That's one of the pre-loaded stories in this sample bear. It's a story of a ninja that fights nightmare monsters in Cy land. Now the bear can tell stories in Over 20 Languages. You can save stories and play.

them offline by just clicking the buttons in the ears. Now, I've been given this early sample of Po to try with my kids at home, and I'm told that the voices I'm experiencing are not the final voice of the bear. But I wanted to show you this to give you an idea of how it all works. The final voice is coming in partnership with 11 Labs. It's a company that makes generative AI voices. But even just sitting here filming this video, there's been a few other voices that I've noticed come out: a brave mermaid named Marina swam speedily through the corridors filled with glowing tanks and strange machines, a roller-skating nurse sipping a milkshake, a prince riding a motorcycle, and a cowgirl enjoying some Asian noodles. Here's a sample the company gave me of what the final Poe could sound like: The Dragon's Gold. Once Upon a Time in the magical land of Everwood, there lived a brave and clever young girl named Lily. She had bright red hair, sparkling green eyes, and always wore a cape made of

feathers. Now I have a lot of thoughts after playing with this with my kids because there is something weird as a parent about not knowing what an AI machine is going to say to my children. But all the stories we generated were just kind of quirky. The worst of it was that sometimes they got a little spooky. I mean you do have options in here for some creepy characters like zombies. And in one story, zombies were having their heads knocked off in battle. A baseball player swung a metal bat, knocking zombie heads off their bodies. Ziron scowled and raised his hands. But the final version will let parents block certain monsters or scary themes if they want to. The shuttle was haunted by the ghost of York Underbridge, an insane astronaut who had died in an explosion years ago. What dwa ha, cackled Underbridge's ghost. Let's just make a story up right now to show you. All right, let's pick an adventure story. Okay, we can make a mermaid in this story, a spooky mummy, a robot, yeah.

let's do a robot. Robot's a bad guy. We'll have it include some jelly beans and a fart, why not? And we'll have it involve teleportation, and it'll be in a secret lab. All right, make up the story. Okay, it's ready. Deep beneath the ocean, where the water shimmered with glowing fish and hidden treasures, lived a mermaid named Coral. One day, Coral received a mysterious message in a bottle. It read, Help needed at the top-secret lab, urgent. Suddenly, the door behind her clanked open, and in stomped a giant robot. Who dares enter my lab? it boomed with a voice like thunder. Coral, swallowing her fear, replied, I'm Coral, and I got a message for help. What's going on? So the stories it generates kind of exist in this literary uncanny valley where there are some random turns the story can take that can be hard to follow. Or maybe sometimes the words are a little strange, like, uh, maybe the vocab isn't something that you would always

see in a kid story with luck unravel the cosmic knot that doomed her kingdom to unending torment. Did you understand it not that much in my time with it? Sometimes the kids were kind of puzzled about what was happening. It said so many things. It says so many things. Part of the struggle is that during my test, some of the voices it was giving me didn't have pauses or rhythm, the kind of rhythm that you would hear from a voice actor. Maybe it'll be a little easier as the voices improve, but this of course makes me think about my childhood and I grew up with the first animatronic talking toy, Teddy Ruxpin. And here you had this bear that played audio from cassette tapes with matching books, and there was a team of writers and musicians and voice actors that sang. Parents knew what story they were buying in this adventure series about friendship. Now the art that made Teddy Ruxpin special has been exported to a machine in the cloud. That's when he realized the horrible truth. This was no

mere robot, but some sort of evil alien construct straight out of a Cosmic nightmare. Wait, that's the story. On the plus side, here we got an activity for a kid where they can practice listening, and they can get a random story every time through the app. They can kind of have some control over what they generate, conjuring everything from a flock of ghostly seagulls to a tornado of fried chicken. But it was no use. With a tremendous flash, the zombie horde turned to dust. Now, at one point, it felt like Po became a game with my kids 'cause they were trying to make a story with every character and every object selected. So, kids sometimes start thinking about how they can make something really crazy. What if you do all of them? What if you do all of them? Go, go ahead, do it, do all of them. You see, with Po, it's kind of like trusting a stranger to tell a story to your kid, but the stranger is a robot that other tech companies trust. By that, I mean Apple. Apple seems to be okay with using chat

GPT to tell stories to your kids because in Apple's June worldwide developers conference presentation an executive said a handy use of chat. GPT would be to have it tell your six-year-old a bedtime story about butterflies. The PO bear takes that same idea. It puts limits on the subjects you can pick and the length of the story. And it sends it to another AI voice program. And the whole thing plays through a squishy bear that takes batteries. Interesting little time we're living in where AI is now cute. This toy is made by a company called Skyrocket. It makes silly talking toys that use modern tech and sensors and ways to make kids laugh. But major toy makers have been looking at this question of using Ai and toys for a few years now. I have seen it at the big toy shows I visit. There are robots that tap into generative AI to chat with kids or answer questions. And some of them right now are pretty expensive. And when I go to these industry events. They're are panels exploring how to use generative.

AI in toys. I mean, take a year ago, where the CEO of VTEC said he saw an AI storytelling teddy bear would be the norm by 2028. Well, it is here with us now in 2024, even if this PO testing voice is still being worked out. I do expect it to evolve fast. Let me know how you feel about it all in the comments below. You know, AI is a shiny new toy right now for every Tech bro out there, but will it also be in your kids' shiny new toys? I'm bridg Cary. Be sure to subscribe to follow our adventures as we keep playing around in this new era of AI.

AI in a Teddy Bear?! Hands-On with Poe, the Talking AI Story Bear

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