A new AI-powered teddy bear could be the solution to storytime with your kids or a creepy robot trying to dodge a parental duty, depending on your point of view. Tech toy company Skyrocket hopes you’ll see Poe the AI Story Bear as the former. The stuffed animal uses AI models from OpenAI to compose new stories based on ideas suggested by a child, which are then narrated by the bear in a friendly but synthetic voice produced using ElevenLabs’ AI voice generator.
The custom stories are composed by the AI model using a wide range of options that a child can choose from the accompanying Poe AI Bear: Story Creator app. There are hundreds of compositing options for story elements, and children can choose a wide range of themes, characters, and locations for the story, and even place themselves in it. If they like the resulting story, they can save it to listen to again or move on and try different options next time.
Because of the AI used to create the stories, there may be similarities based on the icons chosen in the app, but each story will ultimately be different, even if the same options are chosen multiple times. There is only one AI voice included with Poe, but ElevenLabs’ models give it contextually aware emotional tones and otherwise mimic how a human speaks. Poe can tell stories in 30 languages, the languages built into the ElevenLabs model.
“Poe the AI Story Bear gives kids the power to create amazing, personalized stories that they’ll listen to again and again,” Skyrocket CEO Nelo Lucich explained. “It’s always been a dream to have a toy that comes to life and now it’s possible with AI. Poe the AI Story Bear embraces the positive aspects of AI technology and makes it accessible to all types of consumers from all backgrounds and languages, and at a budget-friendly price point.”
AI toy story
Of course, safety is a major concern for a children’s product. To alleviate concerns, Skyrocket Poe has designed it to take input only from the app, so there are no cameras, microphones or direct internet access, just Bluetooth to link to the mobile device. There are also stricter than usual protections for the content that the AI model suggests for the story. That’s also why the theme and character options have been curated, limiting the chance of something inappropriate accidentally being brought up.
Poe’s high-tech prowess comes in a surprisingly affordable $50. Skyrocket has ambitions to develop an entire line of toys with AI-powered features, but the real question is whether parents will view Poe as their kid’s more talkative Buzz Lightyear or a sinister modern-day Furby.
