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Show HN: Stickerbox, a kid-safe, AI-powered voice to sticker printer
Bob and Arun here, creators of Stickerbox.
If AI were built for kids, what would it look like?
Asking that question led us to creativity, and more specifically, the power of kids’ imaginations. We wanted to let kids combine the power of their ideas with AI tools but we needed to make sure we did it safely and in the right way.
Enter Stickerbox, a voice powered sticker printer. By combining AI image generation with thermal sticker printing, we instantly turn kids' wildest ideas into real stickers they can color, stick, and share.
What surprised us most is how the “AI” disappears behind the magic of the device. The moment that consistently amazes kids is when the printer finishes and they are holding their own idea as a real sticker. A ghost on a skateboard, a dragon doing its taxes, their dog as a superhero, anything they can dream of, they can hold in their hand. Their reactions are what pushed us to keep building, even though hardware can be really hard.
Along the way the scope of the project grew more than we expected: navigating supply chains, sourcing safe BPA/BPS free thermal paper, passing safety testing for a children’s product, and designing an interface simple enough that a five year old can walk up and just talk to it. We also spent a lot of time thinking about kids’ data and privacy so that parents would feel comfortable having this in their home.
Stickerbox is our attempt to make modern AI kid-safe, playful, and tangible. We’d love to hear what you think!
P.S. If you’re interested in buying one for yourself or as a gift, use code FREE3PACK to get an extra free pack of paper refills.
- _rpxpx 9mo agoBecause kids famously hate drawing and using their imagination. How wonderful to have technology that can solve that ancient problem.
- smokeydoe 9mo agoLooks really cool, but unfortunately I can not use it because thermal printing paper is coated with endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its substitute, Bisphenol-S (BPS), which can be absorbed through skin contact, potentially leading to metabolic, reproductive, or cancerous issues. It’s basically a very fine plastic dust. Though risk depends on exposure duration and amount, it’s not something I would feel comfortable with kids. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
- gingericha 9mo agoThe site claims to have BPA and BPS free printing paper
- turkeyboi 9mo agoPage claims “No-BPA and no-BPS printing paper”
- loloquwowndueo 9mo agoDid you miss the part where they explicitly said they did “ sourcing safe BPA/BPS free thermal paper” ?
- dingnuts 9mo agoI can't find the CPC certificate for this product. Children's toys are heavily regulated in the US and based on the thermal paper, the lack of display of their authorization to sell, the fly by night nature of a drop shipping website like this ... I don't think this is a legal product to market towards children in the US and that's without even mentioning the LLM usage real glad my nibblings all got real art supplies when they were little. that fosters real creativity and the lot of them can draw better than any of the examples on the sales page, and they're still little kids. and there's no subscription, no EULA, their supplies are legal and safe to use, etc. This product is actual trash
- easton 9mo agodon't mean to steal your customers, but can I just buy good thermal sticker paper somewhere that would work with a regular receipt printer? That would be fun for side nonsense, with or without AI. When I was more youthful I remember getting the avery sticker sheets for a school election, but a roll where someone could do one at a time would be more useful for random stuff.
- starkparker 9mo ago500 BPA/BPS-free 4"x3" thermal labels for $16 or less: https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Labels-Shipping-Multipurpose-Stickers/dp/B0F8PFLJMM https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Labels-Shipping-Multipurpose-... Any of a variety of 4" thermal shipping label printers without AI, generally ranging from $30 to $75: https://www.amazon.com/Phomemo-Bluetooth-241BT-Wireless-Compatible/dp/B0BTYD7H28 https://www.amazon.com/Phomemo-Bluetooth-241BT-Wireless-Comp... Everything about this is marked up to hell to pay for the generative AI end.
- nickthegreek 9mo agoI have a bluetooth thermal printer and the mobile app has this and other ai features available as a subscription option.
- xnx 9mo ago> We wanted to let kids combine the power of their ideas with AI tools Why? Kids can combine the power of their ideas with crayons, markers, and pencils.
- charcircuit 9mo agoMore options is better. I think it's possible for a niche to exist for AI creative tools like this.
- tinfoilhatter 9mo agoI'm struggling to find the creative part in having an AI print stickers for a child. Seems like the entire creative part is skipped over.
- charcircuit 9mo agoThe amount of permutations of words you can say along with the permutations of drawings you can add to the sticker is a gigantic number. That is a big enough state space for people to express creativity.
- venturecruelty 9mo agoThe entire point of being creative is that you actually MAKE it yourself, not that you tell the slop machine to make it for you. This is, quite frankly, the complete and total opposite of creativity. This is pure consumption disguised as creativity, wrapped up in a nice $99 box that will probably be e-waste in a couple years when the company goes under.
- charcircuit 9mo agoIs writing a book not creative if you use an existing font? There are both creative aspects like choosing words or choosing a font and non creative aspects like rendering the font.
- ghostpepper 9mo agoDoes a human review every sticker before it's ever shown to a child? If not, it's only a matter of time before the AI spits out something accidentally horrific.
- jackb4040 9mo agoI searched their site for any information on "how" they can claim it's safe for kids. This is what I could find: https://stickerbox.com/blogs/all/ai-for-kids-a-parent-s-guide-to-the-future-of-play-and-learning https://stickerbox.com/blogs/all/ai-for-kids-a-parent-s-guid... > No internet open browsing or open chat features. > AI toys shouldn’t need to go online or talk to strangers to work. Offline AI keeps playtime private and focused on creativity. > No recording or long-term data storage. > If it’s recording, it should be clear and temporary. Kids deserve creative freedom without hidden mics or mystery data trails. > No eavesdropping or “always-on” listening > Devices designed for kids should never listen all the time. AI should wake up only when it’s invited to. > Clear parental visibility and control. > Parents should easily see what the toy does, no confusing settings, no buried permissions. > Built-in content filters and guardrails. > AI should automatically block or reword inappropriate prompts and make sure results stay age-appropriate and kind." Obviously the thing users here know, and "kid-safe" product after product has proven, is that safety filters for LLMs are generally fake. Perhaps they can exist some day, but a breakthrough like that isn't gonna come from an application-layer startup like this. Trillion dollar companies have been trying and failing for years. All the other guardrails are fine but basically pointless if your model has any social media data in its dataset.
- InitialBP 9mo agoI'm sure you are correct about being able to do some clever prompting or tricks to get it to print inappropriate stickers, but I believe in this case it may be OK. If you consider a threat model where the threat is printing inappropriate stickers, who are the threat actors? Children who are attempting to circumvent the controls and print inappropriate stickers? If they already know about topics that they shouldn't be printing and are trying to get it to print, I think they probably don't truly _Need_ the guardrails at that point. In the same way many small businesses don't (most likely can't even afford to) opt to put security controls in place that are only relevant to blocking nation state attackers, this device really only needs enough controls in place to prevent a child from accidentally getting an inappropriate output. It's just a toy for kids to print stickers with, and as soon as the user is old enough to know or want to see more adult content they can just go get it on a computer.
- qotgalaxy 9mo ago[dead]
- nkrisc 9mo ago> Stickerbox is our attempt to make modern AI kid-safe, playful, and tangible. We’d love to hear what you think! How is it made to be "kid-safe"? > Our model includes strict safety filters that block inappropriate content before it ever appears, ensuring that every creation stays fun, imaginative, and age-appropriate. How do you filter the output of a generative AI like this?
- hesdeadjim 9mo agoI’m sure they just dump the image into another LLM to gauge “safety” and pretend it’s good enough.
- SauntSolaire 9mo agoCynically, my guess is it's just through the system prompt.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- threetonesun 9mo agoFilter the input? If it's trained on all kid-friendly material and you have guardrails on the inputs what's going to come out. I believe Apple has done this pretty successfully on their image gen stuff that was clearly aimed at kids. Granted the outputs are... very boring, but they seem to never give back anything inappropriate.
- nkrisc 9mo agoSure that’s plausible but is that what they actually do?
- gfvbeecv 9mo ago[dead]
- devmor 9mo agoWow, a product that exists entirely to deprive children of the ability to develop artistic creativity. It's rare that I see a launch on HN that I could call abjectly evil, but this is certainly it.
- GaryBluto 9mo agoHow dramatic. It's a little box that lets children make stickers by asking it, it's not "abjectly evil" in any sense.
- venturecruelty 9mo agoAnd asbestos just gives you a little cough. If I weren't already so cynical, this entire thread would certainly do it. You people are so goddamn dismissive in the most repulsive, condescending way.
- GaryBluto 9mo ago> You people are so goddamn dismissive in the most repulsive, condescending way. If you can't handle seeing people disagree with you, why comment? Perhaps a place like Reddit or Mastodon would suit you better.
- venturecruelty 9mo agoI challenge you to re-read your comment again and again until you understand where you went wrong.
- devmor 9mo agoIt’s a device specifically created to deprive children of creativity by doing all of the work their mind would do for them. The kind of process required for healthy childhood mental development. It is heinously disgusting and morally repugnant, everyone involved with creating it and bringing it to market should be ashamed of themselves.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- cobbzilla 9mo agowow the haters are out today! Happy Holidays All! Congratulations to Bob & Arun on the launch!
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mh- 9mo agoThis post has the highest % of unflagged comments in violation of the HN guidelines I've seen in a long time. All the constructive/neutral comments are downvoted, too, giving them even more visibility.
- venturecruelty 9mo agoAnd so are the AI shills. People are allowed to be critical of things.
- smallerfish 9mo agoThe biggest problem is that when this company goes out of business in 5 years that it'll become a paperweight. I'm still bitter at Logitech for screwing up Squeezebox.
- bdavbdav 9mo agoSqueezeboxes still work great! Although that was unusually cool of Logitech to open source LMS.
- strongpigeon 9mo agoHey so I looked at your website and you say you're KidSafe COPPA certified, yet on their website it only mentions you as KidSafe listed? Any reason for the discrepancy? https://www.kidsafeseal.com/certifiedproducts/stickerbox_device.html https://www.kidsafeseal.com/certifiedproducts/stickerbox_dev... Also, do you guys have CPSC CPC certificate? I couldn't find anything to that effect.
- cube00 9mo agoIt's [...] not a place where kids can wander into unknown content. When LLMs are involved, I don't find the guardrails as hard as they are making out. If AI were built for kids, what would it look like? Exactly like this and it's heartbreaking.
- maniacwhat 9mo agoWhen Google and OpenAI struggle to filter their own models to be age appropriate, what makes you think you have been able to crack the problem?
- venturecruelty 9mo agoHubris, mostly, same as always.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- pclark 9mo agoBummed this won’t ship until Feb!
- venturecruelty 9mo ago[flagged]
- modelorona 9mo agoMore for the landfill I guess
- superb-owl 9mo agoLots of hate here, but I think this is clever and some iteration of it will sell well I get that folks are worried about what AI-generated art will do to kids sense of creativity. Will they still learn to draw? Play instruments? Write stories? But I genuinely believe that tech like this will only whet their imaginations. I would have had so much fun with this as an 8 year old, and would have spent hours just in my head, dreaming up ways to use my limited stickers. Ofc parents will still need to encourage them to pick up hard skills (as has always been the case). But having an AI companion will mean they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster. A shallower learning curve will prove to be a very good thing for most.
- venturecruelty 9mo agoWhy learn to draw when the slop machine will make images for you? Why learn to write when the slop machine will make stories for you? Why learn an instrument when the slop machine will make music for you? This does nothing but kill actual creativity at the hands of the people making electricity expensive. We should be appalled and ashamed. Also, criticism is not hate, and I think you and every other disingenuous AI cheerleader know it.
- Wilder7977 9mo agoThese are all (both mine and yours) opinions, and we will need studies to see what's what. That said, my opinion is that not everything is a software development pipeline and needs to be efficient with short feedback loop. To me what you say: > will mean that they start seeing rewards for their efforts much faster sounds essentially a negative. This leads to rewards-chasing and a habit of obtaining result without an appropriate amount of effort. This means that many won't even ever discover their passions or what they are good at. Putting the effort is a necessary step to grow. In other words, will any kid with this machine ever draw something from scratch, after they got used to having something much better than what they could do (at least at the beginning) by hand? All of this without even mentioning the impact of creativity, where instead of having to think/conceive stuff you have a technology that does that for you after a minimal input, rehashing what has been already thought. My wish is that tech people just realized that the world is better off without their tech in most cases and stopped thinking that everything in the world needs some tech to "help" (which of course is really a way to make money).
- kyleee 9mo agoMore accurately - “probably kid-safe”
- vrighter 9mo agoso you built a tool to offload the creative part from kids. This is the total opposite of the stated goal. Using ai leads to brainrot