There’s a brand new AI-powered toy for teenagers 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 artistic concept you’ve in your head and transforms it right into a printed sticker which you can then coloration, peel, and stick anyplace.
Earlier than making an attempt the gadget itself, I’ve to confess I got here with a preconceived unfavorable bias — as did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our preliminary reactions have been related: “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, might symbolize 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 suppose.
Testing the AI sticker printer
The $99.99 toy itself is a small, vibrant pink field with a black-and-white display screen and a giant, white “push-to-talk” button on high. 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 harking back to the Etch A Sketch, which is sensible, provided that 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 employ to immediate the AI mannequin.
Children aren’t serious 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 talents 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 connect 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 no 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 wherein 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 secure to make use of.
The printed sticker is simple 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 facets that include coloring, much like giving youngsters a coloring e book.
This ended up providing a wholesome stability 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 employ Stickerbox, the extra you understand how advanced your prompts will be. You don’t simply need to ask for a fundamental picture, like a “magical unicorn,” you may converse 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 elucidate issues in an easy vogue.)
Making “AI for teenagers”
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 bought 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 rather a lot about what makes a fantastic consumer-facing product, his later stint at Anthropic gave him a firsthand have a look at the advances in AI know-how.
Nevertheless, 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 acquired 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 serious about how AI know-how provided so many novel experiences, however most weren’t made for teenagers.
“No one’s constructing AI particularly for teenagers. In order that’s what we’re on the lookout for,” mentioned Gupta. “What are the proper guardrails? What are the proper methods? What are the proper merchandise?”
They realized that children have nice imaginations, splendid for working with an AI picture mannequin.
“[They have] limitless creativeness and creativity … they’re studying new issues day by day. Each week, they’ve acquired a brand new obsession. We’re actually the primary folks on this planet, I believe, to place a picture mannequin within a field,” Gupta mentioned.
Constructed for updates
Underneath 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 received’t reply to requests for dangerous content material, like violence or sexual imagery, and it filters out swear phrases. And when you strive a considerably extra innocuous command, like “boobs,” it simply prints a random sticker that could 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 possible return to simply prompting the gadget for foolish photos as an alternative.
“We need to be the trusted model for fogeys 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 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 at the moment operating a promotion that gives six rolls with each buy now.)
Over time, the staff plans to discover including premium options, together with a solution to add your personal picture to think about your self in unbelievable situations or collaboration instruments.
As a Wi-Fi-connected gadget, Stickerbox is recurrently up to date with new firmware and options. In exams, as an illustration, we have been capable of print some recognizable characters, however a newer replace added new guardrails to information youngsters towards extra unique designs.
A soon-to-launch companion app additionally enables 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 numerous angels, together with Matt Brezina, and product leaders from different shopper apps.
