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

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.

More options is better. I think it's possible for a niche to exist for AI creative tools like this.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hubris, mostly, same as always.

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.

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.

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?

How dramatic. It's a little box that lets children make stickers by asking it, it's not "abjectly evil" in any sense.

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