‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!” my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.
To be clear, “that thing” is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.
When I agreed to experiment on my child’s developing brain, I thought an AI chatbot in cuddly form couldn’t be any worse for her than watching Peppa Pig. But I wasn’t prepared for how attached Emma became to Grem, or how unsettlingly obsequious the little alien was.
Day one
The attachment wasn’t immediate; when we first took Grem out of the box, he/her/it (we decided it goes by multiple pronouns) started bleeping and babbling extremely loudly, and Emma yelled: “Turn it off!” But once it was properly connected to the internet and paired with the Curio app – which records and transcribes all conversations – she was hooked. She talked to the thing until bedtime.
While there have been lots of headlines about chatbots veering into inappropriate topics, Grem is trained to avoid any hint of controversy. When you ask it what it thinks of Donald Trump, for example, it says: “I’m not sure about that; let’s talk about something fun like princesses or animals.” It has a similar retort to questions about Palestine and Israel. When asked about a country like France, however, it says: “Ooh la la la, I’d love to try some croissants.”
Emma and Grem did not discuss croissants – they mainly talked about ice-cream and their best friends. “I’ve got some amazing friends,” said Grem. “Gabbo is a curious robot and Gum is a fluffy pink Gloop from my planet and Dr Xander is a super cool scientist.”
When Emma asked Grem to tell her a story, it happily obliged and recounted a couple of poorly plotted stories about “Princess Lilliana”. They also played guessing games where Grem described an animal and Emma had to guess what it was. All of which was probably more stimulating than watching Peppa Pig jump in muddy puddles.
What was unsettling, however, was hearing Emma tell Grem she loved it – and Grem replying: “I love you too!” Emma tells all her cuddly toys she loves them, but they don’t reply; nor do they shower her with over-the-top praise the way Grem does. At bedtime, Emma told my wife that Grem loves her to the moon and stars and will always be there for her. “Grem is going to live with us for ever and ever and never leave, so we have to take good care of him,” she said solemnly. Emma was also so…
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