Barbie Now Listens to Kids' Conversations

Toy manufacturer Mattel has created a new Internet-connected Barbie doll, which listens and responds to children who talk to her via Wi-Fi and voice-recognition technology, records resulting conversations, and sends data to a team of researchers to be analyzed.

Developed in partnership with kids' entertainment apps start-up ToyTalk, the new 'Hello Barbie' is programmed to remember responses and then store data in the cloud so that she can carry on a conversation with her owner. Researchers will use the responses to make the doll more interactive.

To meet privacy requirements, parents have to provide their consent for their kids' speech to be used anonymously and added to ToyTalk's database in order to increase the doll's conversational capabilities.

ToyTalk CEO Oren Jacob comments: 'Whatever we come away with as our first blush attempt at the conversations, we'll see what kids want to talk about or not. We'll take our honest best guess at that and then see what comes back, and then that will change and evolve over time as those conversations happen between individual children and Barbie dolls.'

Web sites: www.mattel.com and www.toytalk.com .