A Barbie With Wi-Fi,And Adults Listen In
Ever since Siri appeared as a regular feature on the iPhone, certain young children — and, let’s face it, some of their parents — have spent hours chatting up the virtual assistant, curious about the details of her humanoid back story. Siri, where do you live? Siri, do you have a boyfriend? Siri, how old are you?
“To converse with amobile device is an assumed truth if you are 10 years old today,” Oren Jacob, the chief executive of ToyTalk, a company that creates conversational characters for children, said recently at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.
自從Siri成為iPhone的必備功能後，某些幼童──而且，讓我們承認，還有一些他們的父母──與這位虛擬助理一聊就是好幾個鐘頭，想知道她的擬人化背景故事的詳情。Siri，你住哪兒？Siri，你有男朋友嗎？Siri，你幾歲？
ToyTalk公司為兒童創造能交談的虛構人物，執行長歐倫．傑柯布最近在舊金山的總公司說：「如果你今天是10 歲，會真的與行動裝置交談。」
Founded in 2011, ToyTalk already produces popular animated conversational apps that encourage young children to engage in complex dialogue with make-believe characters. This fall, Mattel plans to introduce Hello Barbie, a Wi-Fi enabled version of the iconic doll, which uses ToyTalk’s system to analyze a child’s speech and produce relevant responses. “She’s a huge character with an enormous back story,” Mr. Jacob sa id of Barbie. “We hope that when she’s ready, she will have thousands and thousands of things to say and you can speak to her for hours and hours.”
ToyTalk創於2011年，已生產廣受歡迎的動畫交談應用程式，鼓勵孩童與虛擬人物進行複雜的對話。今秋美泰兒公司計畫推出「哈囉芭比」，是Wi-Fi版的這種偶像娃娃，用ToyTalk系統來分析兒童說的話，做出切題的回答。傑柯夫談到芭比娃娃時說：「她是有很多背景故事的巨大人物。我們希望當她準備好時，會有好多好多事可以說，而你可以和她聊上好幾個鐘頭。」
This technology, originally designed for mobile screens, is generating controversy. The Campaign for a Commercial- Free Childhood, an advocacy group in Boston, asked Mattel not to release the talking doll. The group said the voice recordings amounted to “eavesdropping” and could be used to exploit the intimate feelings of children.
“Is this going to be some creepy doll that records what is going on in your home without you knowing it?” asks Nicole A. Ozer, the director of technology and civil liberties at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. “What is being recorded? How long is it being stored? Who is it being shared with?”
這項原為行動螢幕設計的科技已引起爭議。波士頓的倡議團體「無廣告童年運動」要求美泰兒不要推出會說話的娃娃。此團體表示，錄音相當於「竊聽」，可能被拿來利用兒童的親密感情。
北加州美國公民自由聯盟科技和公民自由部門主管妮可．歐齊爾說：「這會不會演變成一些陰森森的娃娃錄下你家中發生的事，而你卻不知情？到底錄了什麼？能儲存多久？和誰分享？」
“These could be real cutting- edge approaches to facilitate children’s learning,” said Sandra L. Calvert, the director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at Georgetown University. But, she added, the toys’ impact would depend largely on the depth and breadth of their conversational abilities. “It’s only as good as the programmer,” she said.
Mr. Jacob, who had previously worked as the chief technology officer at Pixar Animation Studios, started ToyTalk with a former colleague, Martin Reddy.
“Could we actually create a character that could talk back and, if we could do that, what would it look like?” Mr. Jacob said.
喬治城大學兒童數位媒體中心主任珊卓．卡爾佛特說：「這可能是幫助兒童學習的真正前衛方法。」不過，她接著說，這些玩具的影響主要視它們交談能力的深度和廣度而定。她說：「它只能和程式設計師一樣棒。」
做過皮克斯動畫工作室科技長的傑柯布與昔日同事馬丁．瑞迪創辦了ToyTalk。
傑柯布說：「我們真能創造個會答話的人物嗎，如果能，會是什麼樣子？」
To develop a system that could both understand a child’s comments and say something engaging back, the company built its own platform to process spoken language — one tailored to the pitch of children’s voices, their prosody and vocabulary. Now, for instance, when a child says “totes jelly” to a ToyTalk app, the language processor understands the phrase actually means: “I’m totally jealous.”
為了研發能了解孩子的談話，又能回答的系統，這家公司建立自己的平台來處理口語──量身訂作成孩童的聲調、他們的韻律和字彙。現在，例如，一個孩子對著ToyTalk應用程式說「totes jelly」，語言處理器了解這句話實際的意思是：「我好嫉妒（I'm totally jealous. ）。」
The company created a privacy process intended to give parents some control over their children’s personal information. Before a child under 13 can use the conversation feature , a parent has to give permission and confirm it via email. Parents also have access to their child’s recorded conversations and can delete them.
“Everybody involved is very aware of how carefully this content needs to be crafted,” Michael Shore, head of consumer insights at Mattel, said about Hello Barbie. “With this powerful a technology, this is something we need to be hypervigilant about.”
這家公司建立了隱私權手續，用意是讓父母能掌控一些孩子的私人訊息。13歲以下的孩子必須父母之一以電子郵件給予許可和確認，才能使用交談功能。父母也可取得孩子錄下的交談內容，並可刪除。
美泰兒的消費者洞察部門主管麥可．休爾談到「哈囉芭比」時說：「參與的每個人都清楚，製作這種內容必須多麼小心。有了功能如此強大的科技，我們必須特別提高警覺。」
（田思怡譯）
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