As a mother or father, it may be daunting at hand over a wise system to their tween when a myriad of on-line risks exist. Pinwheel, a kid-friendly tech firm, is introducing a brand new resolution for folks who need to keep linked with their kids 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 stops 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 encompasses a glossy black design and a display screen that’s barely bigger than that of an Apple Watch. It’s at the moment priced at $160, with a $15 month-to-month subscription. It turned out there for buy on Pinwheel.com final week, and we’ve been testing it over the previous few days.
Along with a extra normal set of parental controls, the characteristic some dad and mom is likely to 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 numerous subjects, together with on a regular basis curiosities, social interactions, and homework-related questions, the corporate claims.
Nevertheless, dad and mom could already be cautious about AI chatbots, as they’ll produce misinformation. Mother and father might additionally argue that the pleasant nature of chatbots can result in unhealthy patterns, the place kids depend on these digital companions for interplay as an alternative of partaking in face-to-face interactions with household and associates.
The corporate defined to us that safeguards are in place; the AI is skilled to acknowledge subjects which may be delicate or inappropriate for youngsters, opting out of those conversations and inspiring children to debate such issues with a trusted grownup as an alternative. Throughout our restricted testing, we confirmed that PinwheelGPT efficiently averted answering inappropriate or violent questions.
Moreover, dad and mom 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’ve got not acquired any pushback from dad and mom as a result of it’s attainable, if they’re involved, to take away the PinwheelGPT from the watch or flip it off by way of your personal controls,” mentioned founder Dane Witbeck, who’s a father of 4. “We don’t use any private knowledge 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 list 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 good wearable market in opposition to main manufacturers like Apple and Fitbit. Pinwheel believes it’s strategically positioning itself by focusing particularly on the children class.
It additionally differentiates itself from different related gadgets, resembling Fitbit’s Ace LTE, which focuses extra on monitoring location and well being metrics.
Along with the AI characteristic, 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, resembling a Tetris-like recreation.
The mother or father monitoring options can be found by way of the “Caregiver” app. This enables dad and mom to create a “Safelist” of contacts that their kids are permitted to speak to, in addition to reject sure cellphone numbers from being added to the checklist.
Moreover, a Schedule tab lets dad and mom arrange completely different modes to make sure that children keep off their gadgets throughout particular instances, like once they’re in school or summer season camp. As an illustration, 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 every thing freely.
If desired, dad and mom have the choice to observe textual content messages, which could possibly be notably helpful for these with youthful kids. Right here, an AI textual content abstract characteristic presents dad and mom concise overviews of youngsters’ textual content message threads.
The Pinwheel Watch is on the market now within the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.Ok., with plans to increase into extra markets quickly. Will probably be out there on Amazon later this summer season, although the corporate has not supplied a particular date.