“Hello Barbie,” the Barbie that stores its owners’ conversations, is causing a stir in the privacy world.
The wifi-connected Barbie, produced by Mattel and tech company ToyTalk, talks to children and stores their conversations in a cloud database. ToyTalk developers can later analyze this information and program the Barbie to remember her owner’s preferences.
In a recent demo, for example, a Mattel representative tells Barbie she likes to be on stage. Later, she asks Barbie what she should be when she grows up. Barbie “remembers” their earlier conversation, and offers, “Well, you told me you like being onstage. So—maybe a dancer? Or a politician? Or how about a dancing politician?”
“So she can remember, just like a real friend,” the representative says.
Parents also have the option of storing these conversations and listening in on them. They can dictate what Barbie is allowed to say, and outlaw certain topics.
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, one of several groups raising red flags over the toy, has released a petition warning parents about the doll.
“Children confide in their dolls,” the group’s director wrote in a statement. “When children have conversations with dolls and stuffed animals, they’re playing, and they reveal a lot about themselves.”
“It’s creepy – and creates a host of dangers for children and families.”
“If I had a young child, I would be very concerned that my child’s intimate conversations with her doll were being recorded and analyzed,” Angela Campbell, a faculty adviser at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, said in a statement.
“In Mattel’s demo, Barbie asks many questions that would elicit a great deal of information about a child, her interests, and her family,” Campbell told Mashable. “This information could be of great value to advertisers and be used to market unfairly to children.”
In addition to its own programmers, ToyTalk will be distributing some audio to third party companies to “assist us with speech recognition.”
Concerns have also been raised over whether this doll could be hacked and used to mine sensitive information.
Watch a demo of “Hello Barbie,” which retails for $74.99:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJMvmVCwoNM
