Photo: Supplied by Riley Malins
A small tech company is working on an app it hopes could act as a digital mentor for children and encourage them to get outdoors.
Avatars Global has partnered with a US company to create a smartphone game with thousands of lifelike characters to pick from, which a child can then interact with.
The app would set challenges - going for a walk, or picking up a bag of rubbish - which a child could complete for in-game digital rewards.
The characters are like a "reverse Tamagotchi", Avatars Global's Riley Malins told RNZ's Nine to Noon.
"With Tamagotchi you had to look after them, you had to check in on them, and the value of care was really flowing one way to look after the spiritual character.
"We envision the reverse of that, where your virtual character is checking in with you, asking you about your goals that you've set the day before, following up on previous conversations, really just acting as a mix of a friend, counsellor and coach for children."
The games are aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 14, he said.
"These avatars are something that can grow with children. In the way that this technology is becoming more and more prevalent, it's not too hard to imagine, you will have an avatar at say 10 that will grow with you, just like having a laptop or a social media account."
The large language models behind the avatars will be trained on a broad range of content sources, he said.
"So just restricting it to relevant education for children of that age, and we're also training them on safety, something that in our customer research has become a paramount concern with AI interactions with children.
"The last thing we want is to create an echo chamber where a child is coming in and confiding to the digital mentor, and it is maybe issuing back some negative sentiments."
The company is working with child psychologists in New Zealand and the US to make sure the large language model operates within a correct child behavioural framework, he said.
Although screen-based, the idea is to get children out in the real world, he said.
Completely removing screens from children's lives is not really feasible at this point and also can create a whole host of other disadvantages for children later on in their life with just the way society is set up.
"So instead of trying to stop it, we've thought about what are some positive feedback loops we can put in that get the kids off the screen when they go on them."
Interactions with the avatar are gamified, he said.
"Individual tasks will be unique to each child depending on their individual needs. But we will have daily challenges, that could be run 2ks. And it will be a smartphone app, so your smartphone will track that you've run the 2ks, once you've hit start to tell it you're going for a run.
"And then once you've done that, it unlocks…it could be a new hat for your avatar or something more fantastical, like some flames coming out the eyes or something that kids would like."
There are no micro-transactions or loot boxes, he said.
"We're not trying to hijack the neural pathways of the children with these feedback loops that we're developing, we want them to create a sense of joy and reward from doing good in the community.
"Other challenges we've looked at is pick up a bag of litter, you prove that by taking a photo and you upload that, and that unlocks the rewards, or planting trees, trying to think of creative ways to get children outside and moving, and doing good in the world."
The app will be subscription-based, he said.
