Although cool, I can see how this product will just inhibit instead of enabling creativity and play in kids. Instead of having to draw something to see it, refining the drawing over minutes or hours, the kid will just lazily ask for some half formed idea, and see it materialize from thin air. That's just sad
I think with the right parental guidance/supervision this could be a very fun toy.
From the website it seems like a great way to generate some black and white outlines that kids can still color in. If used like that it seems almost strictly more creative than a coloring book, no? There are plenty of other ways kids can express creativity with pre-made art too. Maybe they use them to illustrate a story they dreamed up? Maybe they decorate something they built with them?
Also, some children might want to have fun be creative in ways that don't involve visual arts. I was never particularly interested in coloring or drawing and still believe myself to be a pretty creative individual. I don't think my parents buying me some stickers robbed me of any critical experience.
Yeah. It's bad enough if kids prompting this stuff online is the new form that creativity is going to take. But this way, it's generating electronic crap that will end up in landfills as well.
The amount of permutations of words you can say along with the permutations of drawings you can add to the sticker is a gigantic number. That is a big enough state space for people to express creativity.
The entire point of being creative is that you actually MAKE it yourself, not that you tell the slop machine to make it for you. This is, quite frankly, the complete and total opposite of creativity. This is pure consumption disguised as creativity, wrapped up in a nice $99 box that will probably be e-waste in a couple years when the company goes under.
Is writing a book not creative if you use an existing font? There are both creative aspects like choosing words or choosing a font and non creative aspects like rendering the font.
Hey so I looked at your website and you say you're KidSafe COPPA certified, yet on their website it only mentions you as KidSafe listed? Any reason for the discrepancy?
> Stickerbox is our attempt to make modern AI kid-safe, playful, and tangible. We’d love to hear what you think!
How is it made to be "kid-safe"?
> Our model includes strict safety filters that block inappropriate content before it ever appears, ensuring that every creation stays fun, imaginative, and age-appropriate.
How do you filter the output of a generative AI like this?
Filter the input? If it's trained on all kid-friendly material and you have guardrails on the inputs what's going to come out. I believe Apple has done this pretty successfully on their image gen stuff that was clearly aimed at kids. Granted the outputs are... very boring, but they seem to never give back anything inappropriate.
Does a human review every sticker before it's ever shown to a child? If not, it's only a matter of time before the AI spits out something accidentally horrific.
> No internet open browsing or open chat features.
> AI toys shouldn’t need to go online or talk to strangers to work. Offline AI keeps playtime private and focused on creativity.
> No recording or long-term data storage.
> If it’s recording, it should be clear and temporary. Kids deserve creative freedom without hidden mics or mystery data trails.
> No eavesdropping or “always-on” listening
> Devices designed for kids should never listen all the time. AI should wake up only when it’s invited to.
> Clear parental visibility and control.
> Parents should easily see what the toy does, no confusing settings, no buried permissions.
> Built-in content filters and guardrails.
> AI should automatically block or reword inappropriate prompts and make sure results stay age-appropriate and kind."
Obviously the thing users here know, and "kid-safe" product after product has proven, is that safety filters for LLMs are generally fake. Perhaps they can exist some day, but a breakthrough like that isn't gonna come from an application-layer startup like this. Trillion dollar companies have been trying and failing for years.
All the other guardrails are fine but basically pointless if your model has any social media data in its dataset.
I'm sure you are correct about being able to do some clever prompting or tricks to get it to print inappropriate stickers, but I believe in this case it may be OK.
If you consider a threat model where the threat is printing inappropriate stickers, who are the threat actors? Children who are attempting to circumvent the controls and print inappropriate stickers? If they already know about topics that they shouldn't be printing and are trying to get it to print, I think they probably don't truly _Need_ the guardrails at that point.
In the same way many small businesses don't (most likely can't even afford to) opt to put security controls in place that are only relevant to blocking nation state attackers, this device really only needs enough controls in place to prevent a child from accidentally getting an inappropriate output.
It's just a toy for kids to print stickers with, and as soon as the user is old enough to know or want to see more adult content they can just go get it on a computer.
ChatGPT allegedly has similar guardrails in place, and now has allegedly encouraged minors to commit self-harm. There is no threat actor, it's not a security issue. It's an unsolved, and as far as we know intrinsic problem with LLMs themselves.
The word "accidentally" is slippery, our understanding of how accidents can happen with software systems is not applicable to LLMs.
Lots of hate here, but I think this is clever and some iteration of it will sell well
I get that folks are worried about what AI-generated art will do to kids sense of creativity. Will they still learn to draw? Play instruments? Write stories?
But I genuinely believe that tech like this will only whet their imaginations. I would have had so much fun with this as an 8 year old, and would have spent hours just in my head, dreaming up ways to use my limited stickers.
Ofc parents will still need to encourage them to pick up hard skills (as has always been the case). But having an AI companion will mean they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster. A shallower learning curve will prove to be a very good thing for most.
These are all (both mine and yours) opinions, and we will need studies to see what's what.
That said, my opinion is that not everything is a software development pipeline and needs to be efficient with short feedback loop.
To me what you say:
> will mean that they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster
sounds essentially a negative. This leads to rewards-chasing and a habit of obtaining result without an appropriate amount of effort. This means that many won't even ever discover their passions or what they are good at. Putting the effort is a necessary step to grow. In other words, will any kid with this machine ever draw something from scratch, after they got used to having something much better than what they could do (at least at the beginning) by hand?
All of this without even mentioning the impact of creativity, where instead of having to think/conceive stuff you have a technology that does that for you after a minimal input, rehashing what has been already thought.
My wish is that tech people just realized that the world is better off without their tech in most cases and stopped thinking that everything in the world needs some tech to "help" (which of course is really a way to make money).
Why learn to draw when the slop machine will make images for you? Why learn to write when the slop machine will make stories for you? Why learn an instrument when the slop machine will make music for you? This does nothing but kill actual creativity at the hands of the people making electricity expensive. We should be appalled and ashamed.
Also, criticism is not hate, and I think you and every other disingenuous AI cheerleader know it.
don't mean to steal your customers, but can I just buy good thermal sticker paper somewhere that would work with a regular receipt printer? That would be fun for side nonsense, with or without AI.
When I was more youthful I remember getting the avery sticker sheets for a school election, but a roll where someone could do one at a time would be more useful for random stuff.
It’s a device specifically created to deprive children of creativity by doing all of the work their mind would do for them. The kind of process required for healthy childhood mental development.
It is heinously disgusting and morally repugnant, everyone involved with creating it and bringing it to market should be ashamed of themselves.
You could've said the same about the first wooden toys putting an end to children having to use their imagination to make playing with sticks and pebbles fun, but you didn't, because what you grew up with gets a pass.
And asbestos just gives you a little cough. If I weren't already so cynical, this entire thread would certainly do it. You people are so goddamn dismissive in the most repulsive, condescending way.
Is your issue with stickers robbing kids of creativity or do all the licensed IP stickers that fill the stores that children buy immune from this criticism?
No it’s not, and you know it. If a child wants dino stickers for something they are doing, I see no difference of them obtaining those stickers from Walmart or from a printer in their house. In both scenarios, the dinosaurs were not designed by the child. at least in the AI example they can customize to their wants. You don’t seem willing to thoughtfully engage in conversation. Why even post here in first place?
Looks really cool, but unfortunately I can not use it because thermal printing paper is coated with endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its substitute, Bisphenol-S (BPS), which can be absorbed through skin contact, potentially leading to metabolic, reproductive, or cancerous issues. It’s basically a very fine plastic dust. Though risk depends on exposure duration and amount, it’s not something I would feel comfortable with kids.
I can't find the CPC certificate for this product. Children's toys are heavily regulated in the US and based on the thermal paper, the lack of display of their authorization to sell, the fly by night nature of a drop shipping website like this ...
I don't think this is a legal product to market towards children in the US
and that's without even mentioning the LLM usage
real glad my nibblings all got real art supplies when they were little. that fosters real creativity and the lot of them can draw better than any of the examples on the sales page, and they're still little kids. and there's no subscription, no EULA, their supplies are legal and safe to use, etc.
> We wanted to let kids combine the power of their ideas with AI tools
Why? Kids can combine the power of their ideas with crayons, markers, and pencils.
This is the best answer.
Although cool, I can see how this product will just inhibit instead of enabling creativity and play in kids. Instead of having to draw something to see it, refining the drawing over minutes or hours, the kid will just lazily ask for some half formed idea, and see it materialize from thin air. That's just sad
Agree with all of that apart from "although cool". Why is it 'cool'? It's 'cool' only in the way Elon Musk and his retracting door handles are 'cool'.
I think with the right parental guidance/supervision this could be a very fun toy.
From the website it seems like a great way to generate some black and white outlines that kids can still color in. If used like that it seems almost strictly more creative than a coloring book, no? There are plenty of other ways kids can express creativity with pre-made art too. Maybe they use them to illustrate a story they dreamed up? Maybe they decorate something they built with them?
Also, some children might want to have fun be creative in ways that don't involve visual arts. I was never particularly interested in coloring or drawing and still believe myself to be a pretty creative individual. I don't think my parents buying me some stickers robbed me of any critical experience.
Yeah. It's bad enough if kids prompting this stuff online is the new form that creativity is going to take. But this way, it's generating electronic crap that will end up in landfills as well.
More options is better. I think it's possible for a niche to exist for AI creative tools like this.
I'm struggling to find the creative part in having an AI print stickers for a child. Seems like the entire creative part is skipped over.
The amount of permutations of words you can say along with the permutations of drawings you can add to the sticker is a gigantic number. That is a big enough state space for people to express creativity.
The entire point of being creative is that you actually MAKE it yourself, not that you tell the slop machine to make it for you. This is, quite frankly, the complete and total opposite of creativity. This is pure consumption disguised as creativity, wrapped up in a nice $99 box that will probably be e-waste in a couple years when the company goes under.
Is writing a book not creative if you use an existing font? There are both creative aspects like choosing words or choosing a font and non creative aspects like rendering the font.
Some kids might not have arms though? So this helps with that bit, but I'm not sure what they would do with the stickers.
Hey so I looked at your website and you say you're KidSafe COPPA certified, yet on their website it only mentions you as KidSafe listed? Any reason for the discrepancy?
https://www.kidsafeseal.com/certifiedproducts/stickerbox_dev...
Also, do you guys have CPSC CPC certificate? I couldn't find anything to that effect.
> Stickerbox is our attempt to make modern AI kid-safe, playful, and tangible. We’d love to hear what you think!
How is it made to be "kid-safe"?
> Our model includes strict safety filters that block inappropriate content before it ever appears, ensuring that every creation stays fun, imaginative, and age-appropriate.
How do you filter the output of a generative AI like this?
Filter the input? If it's trained on all kid-friendly material and you have guardrails on the inputs what's going to come out. I believe Apple has done this pretty successfully on their image gen stuff that was clearly aimed at kids. Granted the outputs are... very boring, but they seem to never give back anything inappropriate.
Sure that’s plausible but is that what they actually do?
Cynically, my guess is it's just through the system prompt.
I’m sure they just dump the image into another LLM to gauge “safety” and pretend it’s good enough.
Does a human review every sticker before it's ever shown to a child? If not, it's only a matter of time before the AI spits out something accidentally horrific.
I searched their site for any information on "how" they can claim it's safe for kids. This is what I could find: https://stickerbox.com/blogs/all/ai-for-kids-a-parent-s-guid...
> No internet open browsing or open chat features. > AI toys shouldn’t need to go online or talk to strangers to work. Offline AI keeps playtime private and focused on creativity.
> No recording or long-term data storage. > If it’s recording, it should be clear and temporary. Kids deserve creative freedom without hidden mics or mystery data trails.
> No eavesdropping or “always-on” listening > Devices designed for kids should never listen all the time. AI should wake up only when it’s invited to.
> Clear parental visibility and control. > Parents should easily see what the toy does, no confusing settings, no buried permissions.
> Built-in content filters and guardrails. > AI should automatically block or reword inappropriate prompts and make sure results stay age-appropriate and kind."
Obviously the thing users here know, and "kid-safe" product after product has proven, is that safety filters for LLMs are generally fake. Perhaps they can exist some day, but a breakthrough like that isn't gonna come from an application-layer startup like this. Trillion dollar companies have been trying and failing for years.
All the other guardrails are fine but basically pointless if your model has any social media data in its dataset.
They fail their own checklist in that article.
> Here’s a parent checklist for safe AI play:
> [...] AI toys shouldn’t need to go online
From the FAQ:
> Can I use Stickerbox without Wi-Fi?
> You will need Wi-Fi or a hotspot connection to connect and generate new stickers.
I'm sure you are correct about being able to do some clever prompting or tricks to get it to print inappropriate stickers, but I believe in this case it may be OK.
If you consider a threat model where the threat is printing inappropriate stickers, who are the threat actors? Children who are attempting to circumvent the controls and print inappropriate stickers? If they already know about topics that they shouldn't be printing and are trying to get it to print, I think they probably don't truly _Need_ the guardrails at that point.
In the same way many small businesses don't (most likely can't even afford to) opt to put security controls in place that are only relevant to blocking nation state attackers, this device really only needs enough controls in place to prevent a child from accidentally getting an inappropriate output.
It's just a toy for kids to print stickers with, and as soon as the user is old enough to know or want to see more adult content they can just go get it on a computer.
ChatGPT allegedly has similar guardrails in place, and now has allegedly encouraged minors to commit self-harm. There is no threat actor, it's not a security issue. It's an unsolved, and as far as we know intrinsic problem with LLMs themselves.
The word "accidentally" is slippery, our understanding of how accidents can happen with software systems is not applicable to LLMs.
The biggest problem is that when this company goes out of business in 5 years that it'll become a paperweight.
I'm still bitter at Logitech for screwing up Squeezebox.
Squeezeboxes still work great! Although that was unusually cool of Logitech to open source LMS.
It's [...] not a place where kids can wander into unknown content.
When LLMs are involved, I don't find the guardrails as hard as they are making out.
If AI were built for kids, what would it look like?
Exactly like this and it's heartbreaking.
Lots of hate here, but I think this is clever and some iteration of it will sell well
I get that folks are worried about what AI-generated art will do to kids sense of creativity. Will they still learn to draw? Play instruments? Write stories?
But I genuinely believe that tech like this will only whet their imaginations. I would have had so much fun with this as an 8 year old, and would have spent hours just in my head, dreaming up ways to use my limited stickers.
Ofc parents will still need to encourage them to pick up hard skills (as has always been the case). But having an AI companion will mean they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster. A shallower learning curve will prove to be a very good thing for most.
These are all (both mine and yours) opinions, and we will need studies to see what's what. That said, my opinion is that not everything is a software development pipeline and needs to be efficient with short feedback loop.
To me what you say:
> will mean that they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster
sounds essentially a negative. This leads to rewards-chasing and a habit of obtaining result without an appropriate amount of effort. This means that many won't even ever discover their passions or what they are good at. Putting the effort is a necessary step to grow. In other words, will any kid with this machine ever draw something from scratch, after they got used to having something much better than what they could do (at least at the beginning) by hand?
All of this without even mentioning the impact of creativity, where instead of having to think/conceive stuff you have a technology that does that for you after a minimal input, rehashing what has been already thought.
My wish is that tech people just realized that the world is better off without their tech in most cases and stopped thinking that everything in the world needs some tech to "help" (which of course is really a way to make money).
Why learn to draw when the slop machine will make images for you? Why learn to write when the slop machine will make stories for you? Why learn an instrument when the slop machine will make music for you? This does nothing but kill actual creativity at the hands of the people making electricity expensive. We should be appalled and ashamed.
Also, criticism is not hate, and I think you and every other disingenuous AI cheerleader know it.
More for the landfill I guess
Because kids famously hate drawing and using their imagination. How wonderful to have technology that can solve that ancient problem.
When Google and OpenAI struggle to filter their own models to be age appropriate, what makes you think you have been able to crack the problem?
Hubris, mostly, same as always.
don't mean to steal your customers, but can I just buy good thermal sticker paper somewhere that would work with a regular receipt printer? That would be fun for side nonsense, with or without AI.
When I was more youthful I remember getting the avery sticker sheets for a school election, but a roll where someone could do one at a time would be more useful for random stuff.
500 BPA/BPS-free 4"x3" thermal labels for $16 or less: https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Labels-Shipping-Multipurpose-...
Any of a variety of 4" thermal shipping label printers without AI, generally ranging from $30 to $75: https://www.amazon.com/Phomemo-Bluetooth-241BT-Wireless-Comp...
Everything about this is marked up to hell to pay for the generative AI end.
I have a bluetooth thermal printer and the mobile app has this and other ai features available as a subscription option.
More accurately - “probably kid-safe”
wow the haters are out today! Happy Holidays All! Congratulations to Bob & Arun on the launch!
And so are the AI shills. People are allowed to be critical of things.
This post has the highest % of unflagged comments in violation of the HN guidelines I've seen in a long time.
All the constructive/neutral comments are downvoted, too, giving them even more visibility.
Bummed this won’t ship until Feb!
Wow, a product that exists entirely to deprive children of the ability to develop artistic creativity.
It's rare that I see a launch on HN that I could call abjectly evil, but this is certainly it.
How dramatic. It's a little box that lets children make stickers by asking it, it's not "abjectly evil" in any sense.
It’s a device specifically created to deprive children of creativity by doing all of the work their mind would do for them. The kind of process required for healthy childhood mental development.
It is heinously disgusting and morally repugnant, everyone involved with creating it and bringing it to market should be ashamed of themselves.
You could've said the same about the first wooden toys putting an end to children having to use their imagination to make playing with sticks and pebbles fun, but you didn't, because what you grew up with gets a pass.
And asbestos just gives you a little cough. If I weren't already so cynical, this entire thread would certainly do it. You people are so goddamn dismissive in the most repulsive, condescending way.
> You people are so goddamn dismissive in the most repulsive, condescending way.
If you can't handle seeing people disagree with you, why comment? Perhaps a place like Reddit or Mastodon would suit you better.
I challenge you to re-read your comment again and again until you understand where you went wrong.
Is your issue with stickers robbing kids of creativity or do all the licensed IP stickers that fill the stores that children buy immune from this criticism?
That is a ridiculously dishonest comparison and you know it.
No it’s not, and you know it. If a child wants dino stickers for something they are doing, I see no difference of them obtaining those stickers from Walmart or from a printer in their house. In both scenarios, the dinosaurs were not designed by the child. at least in the AI example they can customize to their wants. You don’t seem willing to thoughtfully engage in conversation. Why even post here in first place?
Looks really cool, but unfortunately I can not use it because thermal printing paper is coated with endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its substitute, Bisphenol-S (BPS), which can be absorbed through skin contact, potentially leading to metabolic, reproductive, or cancerous issues. It’s basically a very fine plastic dust. Though risk depends on exposure duration and amount, it’s not something I would feel comfortable with kids.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
The site claims to have BPA and BPS free printing paper
Page claims “No-BPA and no-BPS printing paper”
Did you miss the part where they explicitly said they did “ sourcing safe BPA/BPS free thermal paper” ?
I can't find the CPC certificate for this product. Children's toys are heavily regulated in the US and based on the thermal paper, the lack of display of their authorization to sell, the fly by night nature of a drop shipping website like this ...
I don't think this is a legal product to market towards children in the US
and that's without even mentioning the LLM usage
real glad my nibblings all got real art supplies when they were little. that fosters real creativity and the lot of them can draw better than any of the examples on the sales page, and they're still little kids. and there's no subscription, no EULA, their supplies are legal and safe to use, etc.
This product is actual trash