As a guardian, it may be daunting at hand over a sensible machine to their tween when a myriad of on-line risks exist. Pinwheel, a kid-friendly tech firm, is introducing a brand new answer for fogeys who wish to keep related with their youngsters with out giving them a cellphone.
The Pinwheel Watch is a lately launched smartwatch designed particularly for youths aged 7 to 14, providing a child-safe different that forestalls entry to social media and the web. It options parental administration instruments, GPS monitoring, a digital camera, voice-to-text messaging, enjoyable mini-games, and — right here’s a shock — an AI chatbot.
The smartwatch itself contains a smooth black design and a display that’s barely bigger than that of an Apple Watch. It’s presently priced at $160, with a $15 month-to-month subscription. It grew to become out there for buy on Pinwheel.com final week, and we’ve been testing it over the previous few days.
Along with a extra commonplace set of parental controls, the function some mother and father may be cautious of is the watch’s AI assistant, “PinwheelGPT.”
PinwheelGPT is designed as a safer different to typical AI chatbots, enabling children to ask questions on varied matters, together with on a regular basis curiosities, social interactions, and homework-related questions, the corporate claims.
Nonetheless, mother and father could already be cautious about AI chatbots, as they’ll produce misinformation. Dad and mom may additionally argue that the pleasant nature of chatbots can result in unhealthy patterns, the place youngsters depend on these digital companions for interplay as a substitute of partaking in face-to-face interactions with household and associates.
Picture Credit:Pinwheel
The corporate defined to us that safeguards are in place; the AI is educated to acknowledge matters which may be delicate or inappropriate for kids, opting out of those conversations and inspiring children to debate such issues with a trusted grownup as a substitute. Throughout our restricted testing, we confirmed that PinwheelGPT efficiently prevented answering inappropriate or violent questions.
Moreover, mother and father have full visibility into all interactions with the chatbot, together with each present and beforehand deleted chats, to allow them to step in if any crimson flags come up.
“We have now not acquired any pushback from mother and father as a result of it’s doable, if they’re involved, to take away the PinwheelGPT from the watch or flip it off through your individual controls,” mentioned founder Dane Witbeck, who’s a father of 4. “We don’t use any private information supplied by any customers, minors, or adults, in coaching AI fashions,” he famous.
Witbeck’s firm launched its first child-safe cellphone in 2020 and, 4 years later, ranked No. 212 on the Inc. 5000 record of the fastest-growing firms in America for 2024.
Getting into the smartwatch market looks as if a pure development, permitting the corporate to higher compete within the roughly $100 billion sensible wearable market in opposition to main manufacturers like Apple and Fitbit. Pinwheel believes it’s strategically positioning itself by focusing particularly on the youngsters class.
It additionally differentiates itself from different comparable gadgets, comparable to Fitbit’s Ace LTE, which focuses extra on monitoring location and well being metrics.
Picture Credit:Pinwheel
Along with the AI function, children and tweens could make calls and ship texts on the watch by utilizing voice instructions or a keyboard. There’s additionally a digital camera for video calls and selfies, together with a voice recorder app. Different apps embody an alarm, calendar, calculator, and mini-games, comparable to a Tetris-like sport.
The parent-monitoring options can be found by way of the “Caregiver” app. This enables mother and father to create a “Safelist” of contacts that their youngsters are permitted to speak to, in addition to reject sure cellphone numbers from being added to the record.
Moreover, a Schedule tab lets mother and father arrange completely different modes to make sure that children keep off their gadgets throughout particular occasions, like once they’re in school or summer season camp. As an example, they’ll select to restrict contacts to solely emergency numbers in the course of the day and swap to “All mode” later within the day, permitting their children to entry all the things freely.
If desired, mother and father have the choice to observe textual content messages, which might be significantly helpful for these with youthful youngsters. Right here, an AI textual content abstract function provides mother and father concise overviews of children’ textual content message threads.
The Pinwheel Watch is on the market now within the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.Okay., with plans to develop into further markets quickly. It is going to be out there on Amazon later this summer season, although the corporate has not supplied a selected date.