Will you say 'hello' to Barbie? Mattel's new Barbie doll is 'creeping out' parents, raising concerns of privacy

Classic toy doll, Barbie, has been reinvented after the makers, Mattel received numerous requests for a Barbie doll that kids can talk to, according to a spokesperson of the toy company. Mattel's response is WiFi connected "Hello Barbie" that comes with an installed microphone that records what kids are telling them, transmits it in a cloud server to be analyzed, and then gives the correct vocal response, as reported by Yahoo! News. However, what has raised concerns of parents and critics is that the mechanism to enable Barbie's response will be used for marketing and commercial research.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - "This information [collected] could be of great value to advertisers and be used to market unfairly to children," said Angela Campbell of the Georgetown University Center on Privacy and Technology.

Campbell referred to a demo of Hello Barbie where the toy asked questions about the kids' interests and information about their family.

Stated in a report on MSN News, Pullstring, a speech-recognition platform developed by ToyTalk, allows this new Barbie to engage children into conversations where the dialogues are being written by various writers. 

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The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood launched their petition last Wednesday against Mattel's release of the technologically-advanced doll. CCFC Director Susan Linn said that this "creates a host of dangers for children and families," as kids are actually having a conversation with a company with financial interests.

As of Friday afternoon, the advocates were able to gather more than 3,600 signatures.

Meanwhile, Mattel attempted to lessen the growing concerns by telling parents they could request for the audio recording of the conversation between their children and Barbie to be sent to their email, as reported by Sky News.

In a statement, the company insisted that "Hello Barbie's technology features a number of safeguards to ensure that stored data is secure and can't be accessed by unauthorized users."

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