There is a new AI game for kids called Self-adhesive boxand, before you groan, I’m here to report that it’s amazingly fun.
Stickerbox, a product born from a Brooklyn-based startup Pillis a voice activated sticker printer. The device takes whatever creative idea you have in your head and transforms it into a printed sticker that you can then color, peel and stick anywhere.
Before testing the device itself, I have to admit that I came in with a preconceived negative bias – as did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our initial reactions were similar:An AI that prints stickers? I prefer to design and print my own.”
After testing the review unit the company sent, we were won over.
Self-adhesive boxrealized, that it could represent a new form of creative play — and one that doesn’t entrust the child’s imagination to an artificial intelligence model as much as you might think.
Testing the AI sticker printer
The $99.99 game itself is a small, bright red box with a black-and-white screen and a large, white “push-to-talk” button on top. Ships with three rolls of paper, equivalent to 180 stickers, plus a power cord and colored pencils.
The color scheme of the box is reminiscent of Etch A Sketch, which makes sense, given that Stickerbox feels like a modern spin on that concept. In the case of Etch A Sketch, you have to learn how to control different knobs to create the image in your mind. With Stickerbox, those “knobs” are replaced with something more abstract: the voice commands you use to prompt the AI model.
Kids don’t think about how to become better engineers, of course. they just explore their imaginations and have fun watching their ideas come to life. Any improvement in their motivational abilities is a side effect.
To initially set up the device, a parent will need to help. Just like adding a smart speaker to your home Wi-Fi, you must first connect to Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi and then enter the information to connect to your home network. The installation process, which only took a minute, went smoothly.
Using Stickerbox is simple. You press the button, describe an image aloud, then release the button to see your text appear on the screen, followed by an AI-generated image as the printer makes a physical copy.
There is a serenity to an experience where you think of an idea and then hold it in your hands within seconds.
The device’s thermal image printer does not require ink and paper does BPS and BPA-free, making it safe to use.
The printed sticker is easily cut and can then be colored with the colored pencils that come with the device. Your own crayons and markers work too. This combines the somewhat dopamine-driven experience of thinking of new things to print with the more relaxing or meditative aspects that come with coloring, similar to giving children a coloring book.
This ended up providing a healthy balance between using potentially addictive technology and then slowing down to engage in an actual activity. It also helped combat potential boredom.
The more you use Sitckerbox, the more you realize how complex your prompts can be. You don’t just have to ask for a basic image like a “magical unicorn,” you can speak to Stickerbox with long commands, and the AI analyzes what you mean. (This is especially helpful since children don’t tend to explain things in a straightforward manner.)
Creating “AI for Kids”
Hapiko, the company behind Stickerbox, was founded this year by a CEO Arun Gupta and CTO Robert (Bob) Whitney. The couple first met while working at e-commerce marketplace Grailed, where Whitney was director of engineering and Gupta was managing director. (Company sold to GOAT Group in 2022.)
Prior to Grailed, Gupta founded and launched the Y Combinator-backed hardware sleep tracker WakeMate.
Whitney, meanwhile, had worked as director of engineering in the New York Times Games department as the publisher shifted from just offering crossword puzzles to a full-fledged gaming app, acquiring Wordle and launching other games like Connections and Strads. While that experience taught him a lot about what makes a great consumer-facing product, his subsequent tenure at Anthropic gave him a first-hand look at developments in AI technology.
However, it was his experience as a father that inspired Stickerbox.
When his son asked for a coloring page he didn’t have, he turned to ChatGPT to create a printable.
“I made it for him – a tiger eating ice cream. And he’d never seen a printer before. I got out from under the bed, our brother HP printer – I literally dusted it off and printed it for him, and he went away happy and started coloring,” Whitney explained. “But, a minute later, the gears were turning, and he came back to me, and he said, ‘I want a lizard riding a skateboard.’ And I was like, okay, cool, let me fix it for you.”
His son was so excited about the process of being able to say something and see it come to life, he realized there might be something to it.
“I just saw that look on his magical face — like pure magic,” Whitney noted.
The co-founders were also thinking about how AI technology offered so many new experiences, but most of them weren’t made for kids.
“Nobody is building AI specifically for kids. That’s what we’re looking for,” Gupta said. “What are the right guardrails? What are the right ways? What are the right products?”
They realized that children have great imaginations, perfect for working with an AI image model.
“[They have] endless imagination and creativity… they learn new things every day. Every week, they have a new obsession. We’re literally the first people in the world, I think, to put an image model inside a box,” Gupta said.
Built for updates
Under the hood, Stickerbox actually uses a combination of AI models, including its own proprietary technology focused on making the device safe for kids. It does not respond to requests for harmful content, such as violence or sexual images, and filters out profanity. And if you try a somewhat more innocuous command like “tits,” it just prints a random sticker that might be vaguely related to the word. (For example, you might get a generic cartoon girl, but not one with big breasts.)
After trying and failing to get a naughty result, most kids will probably go back to just asking the device for silly pictures.
“We want to be the trusted brand for parents where you don’t have to look over your child’s shoulder and say ‘what are they doing?’ How are they using this?”’ Gupta said.
For now, the company generates some revenue from sales of the device, but keeps paper supply costs low. It’s just $5.99 for three rolls, which equals 180 stickers. (There’s a promotion currently running that offers six rolls with every purchase now.)
Over time, the team plans to explore adding premium features, including a way to upload your own image to imagine yourself in fantasy scenarios or collaboration tools.
As a Wi-Fi connected device, Stickerbox is regularly updated with new firmware and features. In tests, for example, we were able to print some recognizable characters, but a more recent update added new guardrails to guide kids toward more original designs.
A soon-to-be-released companion app also lets you view past creations and save favorites, and could eventually serve as the home for premium features.
Stickerbox it is backed by $7 million in funding from MaveronSerena Williams’ Serena Venturesof the Allen Institute Incubator AI2and various angels, including Matt Brezina, and top products from other consumer applications.
