What if Teddy Ruxpin but he was infinitely more harmful for the climate??? 
This thing just made the news in Finland after the app refused to work for everyone that had bought the bear on Christmas Eve 
That aside, this shit is just grim. One, having fucking ChatGPT regurgitate some reconstituted literary pink slime to your children instead of just reading them a story book. Lower the kids’ standards and get them acclimated to AI garbage nice and early 
Two, this shit is destined to be e-waste in two months when the app stops being updated
It is infinitely cheaper to have 50-100 prerecorded stories on something like this. But I guess paying a tithe to Sam Altman to be allowed to put AI on the box had an irresistible appeal the idiots making this.
I guess the idea is to let the kid interact with it and have them direct the story to be what they want. I don’t think there’s a way to do that automatically without generative AI or a remote center full of underpaid workers, honestly. Maybe we should use our technology and tremendous productive power to shorten the work day, maximize the time parents have to play pretend with kids and actually get those language skills working as well as they can instead of relying on AI slop?
Choose your own adventure novels have been doing this with zero silicon. Video games like Minecraft are the pinnacle of choose your own narrative game design and don’t deplete the ozone layer. It’s just capitalists trying to keep their heads above water as they move to the next shiniest thing. There is no logic to this. Like there’s more money to be had in non-AI slop but the capitalists are so detached that they’ll sink the entire ship.
But then those workers would feel entitled to being treated well, who knows what could happen!?
You are right. I looked up and this toy comes with an App™ which lets you choose which kind of story you want to come up with. Still terrible but it makes the AI angle more understandable.