As a mum or dad, it may be daunting at hand over a wise gadget to their tween when a myriad of on-line risks exist. Pinwheel, a kid-friendly tech firm, is introducing a brand new resolution for fogeys who need to keep related with their kids with out giving them a cellphone.
The Pinwheel Watch is a not too long ago launched smartwatch designed particularly for teenagers 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 digicam, voice-to-text messaging, enjoyable mini-games, and — right here’s a shock — an AI chatbot.
The smartwatch itself contains a modern 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 customary set of parental controls, the characteristic some mother and father could 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.
Nevertheless, mother and father might already be cautious about AI chatbots, as they’ll produce misinformation. Mother and father may 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 participating in face-to-face interactions with household and mates.
The corporate defined to us that safeguards are in place; the AI is educated to acknowledge matters that could be delicate or inappropriate for kids, 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, 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’ve not acquired any pushback from mother and father as a result of it’s potential, if they’re involved, to take away the PinwheelGPT from the watch or flip it off by way of your individual 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 record of the fastest-growing corporations in America for 2024.
Getting into the smartwatch market looks as if a pure development, permitting the corporate to raised compete within the roughly $100 billion sensible wearable market towards 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, akin to 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 through the use of voice instructions or a keyboard. There’s additionally a digicam for video calls and selfies, together with a voice recorder app. Different apps embody an alarm, calendar, calculator, and mini-games, akin to a Tetris-like sport.
The mum or dad monitoring options can be found by way of the “Caregiver” app. This permits mother and father 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 record.
Moreover, a Schedule tab lets mother and father arrange completely different modes to make sure that children keep off their gadgets throughout particular instances, like after they’re in school or summer season camp. As an example, they’ll select to restrict contacts to solely emergency numbers throughout the day and swap to “All mode” later within the day, permitting their children to entry every little thing freely.
If desired, mother and father have the choice to observe textual content messages, which might be significantly helpful for these with youthful kids. Right here, an AI textual content abstract characteristic presents 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 broaden into further markets quickly. It will likely be out there on Amazon later this summer season, although the corporate has not supplied a particular date.
