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 system takes no matter artistic thought you’ve in your head and transforms it right into a printed sticker that you could then coloration, peel, and stick wherever.
Earlier than making an attempt the system 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 comparable: “An AI that prints stickers? I’d quite design and print my very own.”
After making an attempt the evaluation unit despatched by the corporate, we have been received over.
Stickerbox, I noticed, may signify a brand new type of artistic play — and one which doesn’t outsource the kid’s creativeness to an AI mannequin as a lot as you’d assume.
Testing the AI sticker printer
The $99.99 toy itself is a small, vivid purple field with a black-and-white display and a giant, white “push-to-talk” button on prime. It ships with three rolls of paper, which equates to 180 stickers, in addition to an influence wire and coloured pencils.
The field’s coloration scheme is paying homage to the Etch A Sketch, which is sensible, on condition that Stickerbox appears like a contemporary spin on that idea. Within the Etch A Sketch’s case, you must 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 employ to immediate the AI mannequin.
Children aren’t eager about tips on how to be higher immediate engineers, in fact; they’re simply exploring their creativeness and having enjoyable seeing their concepts come to life. Any enchancment of their prompting skills is a aspect impact.
To initially arrange the system, a mother or father might want to assist. Very like including a sensible speaker to your private home’s Wi-Fi, you must first hook up with the Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi, then enter the data 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 straightforward. You push the button, describe a picture out loud, then launch the button to see your textual content seem on display, adopted by an AI-generated picture because the printer spits out a bodily copy.
There’s a serendipity to an expertise by which you’re considering of an thought after which holding it in your hand in a matter of seconds.
The system’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 simple to tear off after which may be coloured in with the coloured pencils that include the system. Your personal crayons and markers additionally work. This combines the considerably dopamine-driven expertise of considering up new issues to print with the extra calming or meditative facets that include coloring, much like giving youngsters a coloring ebook.
This ended up providing a wholesome stability between utilizing doubtlessly addictive tech after which slowing down to interact in a real-world exercise. It additionally helped to deal with potential boredom.
The extra you employ Stickerbox, the extra you notice how complicated your prompts may be. You don’t simply need to ask for a fundamental picture, like a “magical unicorn,” you’ll be able to communicate to 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 youths”
Hapiko, the corporate behind Stickerbox, was based this 12 months 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 Instances’ Video games division, because the writer pivoted from providing simply crosswords to turning into a full-fledged gaming app, buying Wordle and launching different video games like Connections and Strads. Whereas that have taught him loads about what makes an awesome consumer-facing product, his later stint at Anthropic gave him a firsthand take a look at the advances in AI expertise.
Nonetheless, it was his expertise as a father that impressed Stickerbox.
When his son requested for a coloring web page he didn’t have readily 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 obtained out from beneath the mattress our HP 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 desire a lizard driving 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 eager about how AI expertise provided so many novel experiences, however most weren’t made for youths.
“No person’s constructing AI particularly for youths. In order that’s what we’re searching for,” mentioned Gupta. “What are the best guardrails? What are the best methods? What are the best merchandise?”
They realized that children have nice imaginations, splendid for working with an AI picture mannequin.
“[They have] infinite creativeness and creativity … they’re studying new issues daily. Each week, they’ve obtained a brand new obsession. We’re actually the primary folks on this planet, I feel, to place a picture mannequin within a field,” Gupta mentioned.
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 system kid-safe. It received’t reply to requests for dangerous content material, like violence or sexual imagery, and it filters out swear phrases. And in case you attempt a considerably extra innocuous command, like “boobs,” it simply prints a random sticker which may be vaguely associated to the phrase. (As an illustration, you may get a generic cartoon lady, however not a large-chested one.)
After making an attempt and failing to get a naughty end result, most youngsters will seemingly return to simply prompting the system for foolish photos as a substitute.
“We wish to be the trusted model for folks the place you don’t need to look over your child’s shoulder and be like, ‘what are they doing? How are they utilizing this?,” mentioned Gupta.
For now, the corporate generates some income from the system 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 at the moment operating a promotion that gives six rolls with each buy now.)
Over time, the workforce plans to discover including premium options, together with a solution to add your personal picture to think about your self in implausible situations or collaboration instruments.
As a Wi-Fi-connected system, Stickerbox is often up to date with new firmware and options. In checks, as an illustration, 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 in the end 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.
