- Grimes, Canadian singer and ex-girlfriend of Elon Musk, is working on an AI-powered plush toy named Grok, the first product from Silicon Valley startup Curio.
- The toy is designed to interact with children, capable of holding long conversations as if it were a friend.
- Grimes is an investor in and adviser to Curio, and will also provide the voice for the toy.
- Curio, which uses Open AI’s technology, sees Grok as a helpful tool for parents, including a “bedtime mode” meant to steer children towards going to sleep.
- The toy is available for preorder for $99 and requires a Wi-Fi connection.
Grimes, the Canadian singer and former girlfriend of billionaire Elon Musk, is involved in the creation of an artificial intelligence-based toy, named Grok. Her involvement includes not just investing in and advising Silicon Valley startup Curio, which aims to create a range of AI toys, but also providing the voice for Grok.
Designed in the shape of a rocket, Grok is an AI-powered plush toy that’s been designed with the capability to hold long, fully interactive conversations with a child. The creators describe it as almost like a friend for the child, and it’s been specifically designed with Grimes’s and Musk’s children in mind. Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has three children with Grimes, including their first child X AE A-XII, born in 2020, and a daughter named Exa Dark Siderael Musk, born in 2022.
However, it’s important to note that there is no connection between Musk’s AI startup, also named Grok, and the toy. Curio has clarified that their AI product is completely unrelated and the company owns the trademark for the name. The name Grok was chosen by Grimes and the Curio team, inspired by the term Grocket due to Grimes’s children being frequently around rockets because of their father’s ownership of SpaceX.
The toy is currently available for preorder at a cost of $99, but will not ship until next year. It also requires a Wi-Fi connection to work. However, Curio envisages it as a helpful tool for parents to use, with features such as a bedtime prompt to steer all conversations with the child towards going to bed. If the child doesn’t respond, Grok will even go to sleep by itself.
Curio was founded early this year and includes Grimes and tech enthusiasts such as Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman among its initial investors. The company currently has four full-time staff members and several contractors working in the marketing and manufacturing departments.