There’s a brand new AI-powered toy for youths referred to as Stickerbox, and, earlier than you groan, I’m right here to report that it’s surprisingly enjoyable.
Stickerbox, a product born out of Brooklyn-based startup Hapiko, is a voice-activated sticker printer. The gadget takes no matter inventive concept you have got in your head and transforms it right into a printed sticker you can then colour, peel, and stick anyplace.
Earlier than attempting the gadget itself, I’ve to confess I got here with a preconceived adverse bias — as did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our preliminary reactions have been similiar: “An AI that prints stickers? I’d relatively design and print my very own.”
After attempting the assessment unit despatched by the corporate, we have been gained over.
Stickerbox, I spotted, might symbolize a brand new type of inventive play — and one which doesn’t outsource the kid’s creativeness to an AI mannequin as a lot as you’d suppose.
Testing the AI sticker printer
The $99.99 toy itself is a small, vivid crimson field with a black-and-white display screen and an enormous, white “push-to-talk” button on high. It ships with three rolls of paper, which equates to 180 stickers, in addition to an influence twine and coloured pencils.
The field’s colour scheme is harking back to the Etch A Sketch, which is smart, on condition that the Stickerbox seems like a contemporary spin on that idea. Within the Etch A Sketch’s case, you need to learn to management completely different knobs to create the picture in your thoughts. With Stickerbox, these “knobs” are changed with one thing extra summary: the voice instructions you utilize to immediate the AI mannequin.
Youngsters aren’t interested by tips on how to be higher immediate engineers, after all; they’re simply exploring their creativeness and having enjoyable seeing their concepts come to life. Any enchancment of their prompting skills is a facet impact.
To initially arrange the gadget, a mum or dad might want to assist. Very like including a wise speaker to your private home’s Wi-Fi, you need to first hook up with the Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi, then enter the knowledge to attach with your private home community. The setup course of, which solely took a minute, went off with out a hitch.
Utilizing Stickerbox is easy. You push the button, describe a picture out loud, then launch the button to see your textual content seem on display screen, adopted by an AI-generated picture because the printer spits out a bodily copy.
There’s a serendipity to an expertise during which you’re pondering of an concept after which holding it in your hand in a matter of seconds.
The gadget’s thermal picture printer requires no ink, and the paper is BPS and BPA-free, making it protected to make use of.
The printed sticker is straightforward to tear off after which will be coloured in with the coloured pencils that include the gadget. Your individual crayons and markers additionally work. This combines the considerably dopamine-driven expertise of pondering up new issues to print with the extra calming or meditative points that include coloring, just like giving youngsters a coloring guide.
This ended up providing a wholesome steadiness between utilizing probably addictive tech after which slowing down to have interaction in a real-world exercise. It additionally helped to deal with potential boredom.
The extra you utilize the Sitckerbox, the extra you understand how complicated your prompts will be. You don’t simply must ask for a fundamental picture, like a “magical unicorn,” you’ll be able to converse to the Stickerbox with lengthy, train-of-thought instructions, and the AI parses what you imply. (That is notably helpful given that children don’t have a tendency to clarify issues in an easy style.)
Making “AI for Youngsters”
Hapiko, the corporate behind Stickerbox, was based this yr by CEO Arun Gupta and CTO Robert (Bob)Whitney. The pair initially met whereas working on the e-commerce market Grailed, the place Whitney was director of engineering and Gupta was CEO. (The corporate offered to GOAT Group in 2022.)
Earlier than Grailed, Gupta based and launched the Y Combinator-backed {hardware} sleep tracker WakeMate.
Whitney, in the meantime, had labored because the director of engineering at The New York Occasions’ Video games division, because the writer pivoted from providing simply crosswords to changing into a full-fledged gaming app, buying Wordle and launching different video games like Connections and Strads. Whereas that have taught him lots about what makes an excellent consumer-facing product, his later stint at Anthropic gave him a first-hand take a look at the advances in AI know-how.
Nonetheless, it was his expertise as a father that impressed Stickerbox.
When his son requested for a coloring web page he didn’t have available, he turned to ChatGPT to make a printable picture.
“I made it for him — a tiger consuming ice cream. And he had by no means seen a printer earlier than. I bought out from underneath the mattress, our HP brother printer — actually dusted it off and printed it for him, and he ran off fortunately and began coloring it,” defined Whitney. “However, a minute later, the gears have been turning, and he got here again to me, and he was like, ‘I need a lizard using a skateboard.’ And I used to be like, okay, cool, let me make that for you.”
His son was so thrilled with the method of having the ability to say one thing and see it come to life that he realized there could possibly be one thing to this.
“I simply noticed this look on his face of magic — like pure magic,” famous Whitney.
The co-founders have been additionally interested by how AI know-how supplied so many novel experiences, however most weren’t made for youths.
“No one’s constructing AI particularly for youths. In order that’s what we’re on the lookout for,” stated Gupta. “What are the correct guardrails? What are the correct methods? What are the correct merchandise?”
They realized that children have nice imaginations, splendid for working with an AI picture mannequin.
“[They have] countless creativeness and creativity … they’re studying new issues day by day. Each week, they’ve bought a brand new obsession. We’re actually the primary individuals on the planet, I feel, to place a picture mannequin inside a field,” Gupta stated.
Constructed for Updates
Below the hood, Stickerbox really makes use of a mixture of AI fashions, together with its personal proprietary tech centered on making the gadget kid-safe. It gained’t reply to requests for dangerous content material, like violence or sexual imagery, and it filters out swear phrases. And if you happen to attempt a considerably extra innocuous command, like “boobs,” it simply prints a random sticker which may be vaguely associated to the phrase. (As an example, you would possibly get a generic cartoon lady, however not a large-chested one.)
After attempting and failing to get a naughty consequence, most children will seemingly return to only prompting the gadget for foolish pictures as an alternative.
“We need to be the trusted model for folks the place you don’t must look over your child’s shoulder and be like, ‘what are they doing? How are they utilizing this?,” stated Gupta.
For now, the corporate generates some income from the gadget gross sales, nevertheless it retains the price of restocking paper low. It’s simply $5.99 for 3 rolls, which equates to 180 stickers. (It’s presently working a promotion that provides six rolls with each buy now.)
Over time, the group plans to discover including premium options, together with a option to add your individual picture to think about your self in unbelievable eventualities or collaboration instruments.
As a Wi-Fi-connected gadget, the Stickerbox is frequently up to date with new firmware and options. In assessments, for example, we have been in a position to print some recognizable characters, however a more moderen replace added new guardrails to information youngsters towards extra authentic designs.
A soon-to-launch companion app additionally allows you to view previous creations and save favorites, and will finally function the house for premium options.
Stickerbox is backed by $7 million in funding from Maveron, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, the Allen Institute’s AI2 incubator, and varied angels, together with Matt Brezina, and product leaders from different shopper apps.
