Internet Connected Barbie, Hello!

When I was a kid I played with Barbies (and complained when my twin brother cut their hair after tangling it to rat nest standards) but the big talking doll was Chatty Cathy. She had a string you pulled and a few different phrases that randomly repeated. That was the entire level of interaction involved. Now toy makers have come out with an internet (the cloud) connected Barbie that not only talks to you but stores and uses the things you have spoken with her about in conversation. Yes, the doll uses a speech-recognition platform called Pullstring, developed by San Francisco startup ToyTalk, which allows writers to create evolving dialogue based on what your child says. Your child presses a button on Hello Barbie's belt to chat and Barbie “listens” to their speech. An audio recording is then sent over a WiFi connection to ToyTalk’s cloud-based servers, where your child's speech is recognized and processed so Barbie can then make an intelligent response. There are groups with privacy concerns stirred up over this newest Barbie clamoring for her removal from the market. I think it may be too late for that since the cat is probably already out of the bag and I wonder what my grandson, who talks to Siri on my iPhone, making Siri call herself a doo-doo-head, would have to say to Barbie!