Google Is Making a Robot Teddy Bear That Can Recognize Your Face

Google ’s hoping there ’s a marketplace for sophisticated unreal intelligence service voice assistants you could hug .

The company’smost recent patent designfor an anthropomorphic voice assistant / toy reads like someone dream it up after watching an AI and Ted three-fold - feature ( and had obviously never find out Child ’s dramatic play ) . It ’s a golem shaped like a teddy bear or bunny rabbit thatuses facial recognitionto identify the gaze of whoever ’s look at it .

The toy , equip with cameras and microphone , will reply to phonation statement and play music or turn on a machine-accessible media player . It ’s basically a spin onthe Amazon Echo , twine in a cuddly exterior , or a super - juiced edition of those lucullan dolls paranoid parents use to spy on their kids and baby-sitter .

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Google’sillustrationsfor its likely personal media player are fodder for incubus . The drawings are quite rough , but it really nailed the “ soulless eyes ” look :

The patent of invention explains that the doll will also sometimes produce a “ visible acknowledgment ” when someone sing . Which I can only imagine would attend something like this :

Google is n’t exactly first out of the logic gate here with vaguely creepy AI toys . Mattel already dove into a silicon - fuelled uncanny vale with “ Hello Barbie,”a Barbie equipped with colloquial intelligence technology . And a company called CogniToys is developing an AI dinosaur toyit hopes will“develop the capacity to reason about the child ’s life . ”

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Perhaps to quell concern that Google is targeting kids with a machine capable of stash away data point on whatever they say or do in its presence , the patent endeavor to pretend like a jazz - enjoy adult would also practice it . “ If the voice dictation is ‘ act late - full stop John Coltrane , ’ the media equipment command may learn medium gimmick 404 to play music recorded by John Coltrane between 1965 and 1967,”it read .

But amount on . set up a voice - command assistant inside a toy is either a bid for kids or a bid for the Adult Baby community of interests , and there are n’t enough tender loving care specials in the world to make draw a bead on at the Adult Baby community lucrative .

If Google makes this gimmick , the biggest job will undoubtedly be look at with privacy . A doll with the ability to passively collect audio and video information on what ’s go on in a kid ’s room ( or , ugh , amercement , and Adult Baby ’s way ) gives off a distinct “ undercover surveillance ” vibration .

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