'Children could become attached to a bot rather than a person or imaginary friend, which could hurt their development.' 'Children could become attached to a bot rather than a person or imaginary friend, which could hurt their development.' Advocates are fighting against the $16.7bn global smart-toy market, decrying surveillance and a lack of regulation As the holiday season looms into view with Black Friday, one category on people's gift lists is causing increasing concern: products with artificial intelligence. The development has raised new concerns about the dangers smart toys could pose to children, as consumer advocacy groups say AI could harm kids' safety and development. The trend has prompted calls for increased testing of such products and governmental oversight.

Barbie is one of the most successful children's toys in history, spawning a multimedia franchise that includes merchandise, video games and a live-action film. Since US toy giant Mattel launched the original Barbie in 1959, more than 1 billion of the dolls have been sold worldwide. Certainly, Barbie's looks have been tweaked over the years to reflect changing beauty ideals and societal shifts. But according to a new study, one subtle change to Barbie has gone largely unnoticed – until now. Scientists in Australia have found that Barbies today have flatter feet than they did in past decades.

It's the year 2023, so anything that can get an injection of AI will get an injection of AI. However, I doubt many people had the board game Pictionary on their artificial intelligence bingo card. Mattel just surprised us all and announced a new version of the game, Pictionary Vs. It's the brand's first title to "incorporate AI technology" and marks the company's "first major leap into the category." The difference between this and traditional Pictionary is that here everyone works to stump the artificial intelligence, instead of each other.

In 2019, Greta Gerwig became the latest in a line of writers, directors, and producers to make a pilgrimage to a toy workshop in El Segundo, California. Touring the facility, the Mattel Design Center, has become a rite of passage for Hollywood types who are considering transforming one of the company's products into a movie--a list that now includes such names as J. J. Abrams (Hot Wheels) and Vin Diesel (Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots). The building has hundreds of workspaces for artists, model-makers, and project managers, and it houses elaborate museum-style exhibitions that document the company's history and core products. These displays can help a toy designer find inspiration; they can also offer a "brand immersion"--a crash course in a Mattel property slated for adaptation. When a V.I.P. visits, Richard Dickson, a tall, bespectacled man who is the company's chief operating officer, plays the role of Willy Wonka. He'll show off the sixty-five-year-old machines that are still used to affix fake hair to Barbies; he'll invite you to inspect life-size, road-ready replicas of Hot Wheels cars. The center even boasts a giant rendering of Castle Grayskull, the fearsome ancestral home of He-Man.

Even if you haven't tried artificial intelligence tools that can write essays and poems or conjure new images on command, chances are the companies that make your household products are already starting to do so. Mattel has put the AI image generator DALL-E to work by having it come up with ideas for new Hot Wheels toy cars. Used vehicle seller CarMax is summarizing thousands of customer reviews with the same "generative" AI technology that powers the popular chatbot ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Snapchat is bringing a chatbot to its messaging service. And the grocery delivery company Instacart is integrating ChatGPT to answer customers' food questions. Coca-Cola plans to use generative AI to help create new marketing content.

When Azure OpenAI Service launched in 2021, the service -- a part of Azure Cognitive Services -- provided enterprise-tailored access to OpenAI's API through the Azure platform for applications like language translation and text autocompletion. But after expanding the service in May with fine-tuning features, Microsoft is today introducing invite-only access to DALL-E 2 for select Azure OpenAI Service customers. Customers can use DALL-E 2 to generate custom images using either text or images. In line with the consumer DALL-E 2 service, they can leverage inpainting and outpainting -- capabilities that generate new content within a portion of an image or push an image beyond its original confines, respectively -- in addition to a feature that generates variations on an existing image. Early adopters include brands like Mattel, which used DALL-E 2 to come up with ideas for a new Hot Wheels model car.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report titled Artificial Intelligence for Children -- a toolkit to enable various stakeholders to "develop trustworthy artificial intelligence for children and youth." "Children and youth are surrounded by AI in many of the products they use in their daily lives, from social media to education technology, video games, smart toys and speakers. AI determines the videos children watch online, their curriculum as they learn," it says in the report's introduction. The WEF toolkit was created by a team of academics, business leaders, technologists, and youth leaders. Its purpose is to enable the business sector to create ethical, responsible, and trustworthy AI to support parents, guardians and youth to navigate the AI environment safely.

The mid-'80s was a notable time for women in computer science--because that was when they started disappearing. From 1970 into the start of the 1980s, the percentage of computer science degrees conferred to women rose, peaking at 37.1 percent in 1984. But this number then dipped drastically, and we've never recovered. The most recent report from the Computing Research Association shows the number of women graduating with computer science bachelor's degrees, in its sample of U.S. institutions, in 2019 at 21 percent. So, after decades of women representing both pioneers of computing and a large percentage of the day-to-day programming workforce, what happened in the '80s?

Mattel pulled a much-anticipated and hotly-debated toy recently. Aristotle, a device geared for children anywhere from infancy to adolescence, was set up to be the kid's version of Alexa. It boasted features such as the ability to soothe a crying baby, teach ABCs, reinforce good manners, play interactive games, and help kids with homework. Marketed as an "all-in-one nursery necessity" on Mattel's website, it also offered e-commerce functionality that would enable Aristotle to automatically reorder baby products based on user feedback. This little gadget would be the next big thing, engineered to "comfort, entertain, teach, and assist during each development state – evolving with a child as their needs change."

Apple has acquired PullString, the startup behind the voice technology powering the interactive "Hello Barbie" doll Mattel released in 2015. PullString, previously known as ToyTalk, was founded back in 2011 by former Pixar employees. Its AI platform gave its partner companies and clients a way to create digital and physical characters and voice apps that can communicate with people. Hello Barbie was one of those -- an interactive Thomas The Tank Engine toy was another. The company previously launched software that makes it easy even for non-technical pros to create Alexa apps of their own, as well.