Would You Buy Your Kids A “Hello Barbie” Doll?

Most kids like to talk to their toys, it’s not uncommon. As far back as I can remember, like many children, I’d play with toys and do voices for them, or ask them questions on behalf of other toys, playing out scenarios I’ve just come up with.

“Hello Barbie” uses speech recognition and connects to Wi-Fi. When someone presses a button on her belt buckle, Barbie will record what everything you say and send it it up to the cloud. It’s saved, so Barbie keeps learning more and more about you, in order to inform her responses. The software then sends back a command to the doll to playback a reply stored in the toy. Barbie is programmed with various questions, jokes and quips, which are picked by the back-end software in response to whatever the kid wants to talk about. “Hello Barbie” will learn a child’s likes and dislikes so that she can incorporate them into conversation. Possibly even to be used to advertise.

How is this different than Samsung Televisions, Siri, Google Now, and Cortana? Yes, it’s a privacy concern, but what are other cyber-risks?

Children have been targeted by the unscrupulous cyber bad guys, even baby Emma and her parents were subject to online harassment when they failed to secure their Internet enabled baby monitor (see my video presentation on cyber-risk). I’m sure with the proper safeguards, the “Hello Barbie” can be an enjoyable toy for kids, but I don’t think the security is there yet.

Have you seen Feminist Hacker Barbie?