by Joyce Slaton posted in Products & Prizes

Today Mattel announced the forthcoming release of a new voice-controlled AI assistant aimed at children. Initially pitched as "the world's first voice-controlled smart baby monitor that grows with your child," and "the only smart baby monitor that comforts, teaches and entertains," Aristotle is in reality an Amazon Echo or Google Home that can understand your mush-mouthed toddler's commands and is designed to live in a child's room instead of a family room.

As early adopters of such voice-operated assistant systems already know, they're fun, if still somewhat limited tools for the home that are enthusiastically embraced by kids. After all, using voice commands comes naturally to young kids, who can ask for things verbally as early as toddlerhood. Training a child already able to whine "Mommy, I'm hungry!" to instead say "Aristotle, play 'Wheels on the Bus'" is only a short logistical hop. One problem parents have noticed" Trained to recognize variations on articulate adult speech, such systems have a hard time understanding what children as asking for. As Fast Company magazine's CO.DESIGN writer Mark Wilson wrote in his story about Aristotle this week,
[O]ver the course of dinner, as [Wilson's toddler] did his best to yell to [Google Home], "Okay, Google, how fast do lions run"" and "Okay, Google, how far is our moon"" I realized its flaw: Google's voi...