AI turns Furby into an object of (even more) eldritch horror

Furby is a beloved toy that we all love and know. Furby is a 1990s toy with a bad reputation. It is known for its destructive nature and the cursed DIY community. On Sunday, Furby’s desire to be world-dominant was the catalyst for a new AI-powered version.

“Hello there, it’s so nice to meet you,” the Furby says. It ends the conversation with: “Furby’s plan to take over the world involves infiltrating households through their cute and cuddly appearance, then using their advanced AI technology to manipulate and control their owners. They will slowly expand their influence until they have complete domination over humanity.”

Furby’s nakedness is evident from the moment it was born. The eyes and beak are all that remain. There are two spear-shaped ears. You can watch them wiggle and waggle, adding a bit of inflection to the Furby’s soothing words.

The Furby’s creator Jessica Card, who is 32, grew up with the iconic toy. “I was absolutely fanatical about getting a Furby,” she told Polygon via email. “My first Furby was the black and white tuxedo Furby, and I was obsessed with it. Fast forward to now – I’ve been a software engineer for the last decade, and I recently went back to college at the University of Vermont to finish a degree in Computer Science because I dropped out to pursue programming. A semester-long project that is open to all students allows me to make something with the Raspberry Pi. Thus, ChatGPT Furby was born.”

Fear not — this skinless Furby is not her original, beloved toy. She did not have “the heart to cut that one up,” and instead called herself “(probably) the biggest purchaser of Furbies on eBay.”

All said and done, it took her about a month — dedicating a day or two a week — to complete ChatGPT Furby. She first skinned Furby, then took apart its motor and hooked it up to her Raspberry Pi.

“It was a process,” she said. “I literally have Furby pelts all over my dining room table right now. It turns out the skin is held on by a zip tie, so once you cut that, you then have to carefully remove hot glue around the carapace and face, cut a few strings, and pull it right off!”

She used Python’s Speech Recognition Library for the audio, and OpenAI’s Whisper Library for speech-to-text conversation — which allowed her to ask the Furby questions, and for those questions to be translated to written text. ChatGPT received her written text conversion. Card’s program sent that response through the AI voice generator, Narakeet, which generated a child’s voice as the speaker for the Furby’s answer.

“There will be more to come with it over the next month,” Card said, adding “hopefully isolating the movements and speeding up the round trip time. You should also put its skin on. Stay tuned!”