Back in January, Mattel announced that it was working on a smart speaker geared towards infants, in a bid to bring virtual assistants into the early stages of a child"s life as a tool for teaching, which would evolve with said child as they grew. However, after numerous calls by parents, and even senators in the US government to scrap the device over privacy concerns, it would seem that the company has buckled on the issue.
Mattel announced that Aristotle will officially be scrapped from its roadmap. The smart speaker, which was reportedly powered by Microsoft"s Core Services, was aimed at providing parents with a tool to teach their children, or provide soothing music for babies during nap time, and other similar tasks. The device was touted to include both Cortana from Microsoft, and Amazon"s Alexa digital assistants, in addition to an offline mode.
Several advocacy groups and two lawmakers pressured the company to shut down the project, noting that the device could give malicious parties the ability to spy on infants and possibly influence the information given to them. Beyond that, they cited that Mattel would have an "in-depth" database of children that use the device, which sparked more concern over what the company could do with the information.
Advocacy group "Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood" sent a petition with 15,000 signatures to Mattel, claiming the following:
"Aristotle would inject corporate surveillance and marketing into the most intimate and important moments of young children"s lives."
As we reported, the device would have shipped with a "secure" camera that allowed parents to stream live video of their children and would have come at a $300 price tag. This isn"t the first time Mattel has landed in hot water over its push to bring smart devices to children. Earlier, its "Hello Barbie" toy was under scrutiny after regulators and the FBI warned that it could put the privacy of children at risk, and it was reported as being "vulnerable to hacking" after security researchers found several security flaws in its software.
Source: Phys.org