Moving the human race one step closer to its long-cherished dream of never having to be alone with its stupid little thoughts ever again, the Hasbro corporation announced this week that it’s launching a new AI initiative to let users interact with fully licensed versions of its various characters—instead of all those knock-off Megatrons you’ve been spending all your time with of late. Per THR, the new technology is called CharacterOS, and, yes, before you ask: It will let you hang out on hold with a digital recreation of Mr. Potato Head, hearing all of his deep Mr. Potato Thoughts.
This is all apparently the brainchild of a new in-company studio called Sixth Wall—which we’re sure someone thought was a very clever reference—and came about because Hasbro looked around at various AI companies ripping off its IP and decided that if anyone was going to profit off of soulless machine simulacra of its beloved characters, it was going to be them. (It’s a bit like the short-lived deal Disney signed with OpenAI’s Sora last year, largely predicated on the idea that, if these copies are going to happen, they might as well be authorized copies.) And, hey, very mild credit where it’s due: The company has committed to using (and paying) the actual existing voice actors for its characters in order to fuel this stuff, including buy-in from long-time Optimus Prime voice actor Peter Cullen. (We’re not saying that guys like Cullen signing on for this thing is good per se, but it does feel at least better than just generating a “new” voice from an AI trained on stolen clips of their past performances. Truly, the future is a wonderland of ethical distinctions.)
As ever, though, we simply remain staggered and awed by the absolutely vital use cases that AI executives come up with to justify the existence of products like this: Sixth Wall CEO Rebecca Thomson sounded absolutely giddy at some of the ideas she’s come up with for why you might want an AI version of Cobra Commander or the Potato Head family hanging around: “Imagine you’re waiting on hold for a customer service agent playing a voice game of Trivial Pursuit. Suddenly, you wouldn’t mind your 10 minute wait. You might actually be like, ‘wait, I haven’t finished.'” (Thomson also makes the utterly wild statement that “Right now all of our IP is sitting in static media, trapped in a toy on a shelf, a movie, a video game,” a completely batshit way to describe every fictional character ever created by humanity. “I sure do like Captain Ahab and Batman and Tom Sawyer,” we frequently say to ourselves. “What a pity they’re all sitting in static media.”)
Sixth Wall says its character packages are essentially a blend of voices and hard-coded rules for how characters should and shouldn’t behave, presumably so that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head don’t start telling you they spotted you from across the baked potato bar, and really dig your vibe. The company envisions licensing these digital monsters to third parties for things like “Interactive storytelling experiences, connected physical products and robotics, dynamic customer engagement agents,” and more—which means we may someday live in a world where you can have Mr. Potato Head living in your smart air fryer, able to do nothing but listen and suffer as you systematically season and cook his people. Thanks, Hasbro!
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