The price of AI has skyrocketed tenfold, and the toy industry wants to create another Pop Mart

With the continuous advancement of artificial intelligence technology, AI toys are gradually becoming the new favorite in the market. These smart toys that integrate large models, speech recognition and speech synthesis technology have not only attracted the attention of giants, but also stimulated the enthusiasm of startups.

In posts sharing the "Conspicuous Bag" on social platforms, comments such as "Are you selling it?" and "Buy it at a high price" frequently appear. The "Conspicuous Bag" is a toy that ByteDance has previously given to customers. Different from traditional toys, this is an AI toy that has embedded technologies such as a large bean bag model, a professional version of buttons, voice recognition, and voice synthesis.

This non-saleable product has been sold at a price of around 300 yuan on second-hand platforms. The popularity of the "Conspicuous Bag" confirms a fact: the trend of hardware AI has already spread to the toy market.

An AI toy entrepreneur told Tech Planet that the number of inquiries for cooperation and OEM has soared in the past month. According to a report by market research firm Research and Markets, the global AI toy market is expected to grow from approximately US$8.7 billion in 2022 to US$35.11 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 16%.

After mainstream hardware such as headphones, glasses, mobile phones, and computers have been AI-enabled, AI toys are becoming a new hope for large-scale model capabilities to break through the difficulties of C-end landing. Under this trend, giants such as ByteDance and Tesla, as well as many startups, are accelerating their influx.

1. Get ahead in the AI ​​toy race

In an AI hardware startup exchange group, discussions on the topic of "AI toys" are becoming increasingly heated. Entrepreneurs see it as a new market with unlimited prospects, and some even shouted the slogan "AI redoing the toy market."

A practitioner told Tech Planet that the common point of current AI toy startups is reflected in the technical path. Most of them choose to connect to external large models. By connecting to general large models, they can train small models in vertical fields, reduce investment in independent research and development, and then match appropriate hardware.

But the difference lies in the consumer groups they target. For example, for the children's market, related AI toy products are mainly aimed at making up for the lack of parental companionship and satisfying interests and hobbies, while for adults, AI toys are mainly aimed at satisfying emotional values ​​and alleviating negative emotions such as loneliness.

Therefore, most of the AI ​​toys presented to children are "dolls" with educational attributes, while the AI ​​toys presented to adults have "pet" attributes.

Recently, the popularity of "AI toys" has been verified many times on a small scale.

In November this year, Tesla launched a $40 Optimus robot model in its online store. It was sold out in less than a day after its launch and has not been restocked to date. On second-hand trading platforms such as eBay, the price of this robot has been as high as $1,300.

Also in November, Japanese electronics company Casio officially released its AI robot pet Moflin, priced at 59,400 yen (equivalent to RMB 2,779). It was sold out during the pre-sale stage, and the price of Moflin was hyped up to 10,000 yuan on the second-hand platform Xianyu. A Japanese purchasing agent told Tech Planet that many domestic customers have inquired about it, but this product currently requires reservations.

Looking at the domestic market, in addition to the "conspicuous bag" launched by Doubao, more and more AI toys are on the shelves for sale.

AI startup Haivivi launched an AI external gadget for plush toys, BubblePal, in July this year. The official price of BubblePal is 449 yuan, and the GMV in the first month of sales exceeded 4 million. Official data shows that more than 20,000 units were sold within two months of its launch.

The FoloToy team, which provides the large-model AI movement for ByteDance's "Conspicuous Package", not only provides solutions for the B-end, but also targets the C-end market, and has successively launched AI toys such as the Fofo Fire Rabbit and the "Ghostly" Cactus.

There are also some companies whose products have not yet been fully launched on the market, but have attracted widespread attention because of the background of their founders.

According to incomplete statistics from Tech Planet, Singularity Intelligence, founded by Bao Ta, former vice president of Meituan, has developed AI smart hardware equipped with large models for children; Guo Zhi, former general manager of Microsoft's DPS Global Solution Innovation Department, founded Yijiayiban and launched the AI ​​playmate robot "Ai Xiaoban"; Sun Zhaozhi, the former head of product design of Xiaopeng Robotics, founded Luobo Intelligence, positioning it as an AI companion robot, and its first product is "AI Chaowan"; Huang Yingning, former general manager of Fourth Paradigm AIOS, founded Beipei Technology, focusing on related toy hardware for AI large-model educational companionship.

In addition, some listed companies are also entering the market. Among them, Tom Cat AI robot plans to launch the first batch of products before the Spring Festival. Aofei Entertainment launched the first AI smart product of Pleasant Goat - "Pleasant Goat Super Bell Doll".

2. With the help of AI, the price of traditional toys has increased tenfold

"The principle of AI toys is to install software on various forms of hardware, access large models through API calls, and interact with users by dialogue and other means," said an AI practitioner.

In his opinion, compared with smart speakers, story machines, early education machines, phone watches and other products, the difference of AI toys is mainly reflected in interaction and feedback. By carrying large models, they can achieve natural conversations with users and answer questions.

Take BubblePal under Haivivi as an example. It can be worn on any doll in the form of a pendant. It can tell stories and play word chains for users, and support the role-playing of different IP images.

Many parents who purchased the product said that compared with Tmall Genie and Xiaoai Speaker, it can basically understand children's emotions, and the language used in communicating with children is simpler and easier to understand.

For this reason, compared with traditional toys that focus more on appearance and IP characteristics, the special experience brought by AI toys mainly comes from natural interaction.

Therefore, an entrepreneur who is entering the market told Tech Planet that AI toys are more about selling solutions than selling toys. "Entrepreneurs only need to provide AI software solutions, and there will be many factories that can take orders and customize the AI ​​toys you design."

The owner of a plush toy factory told Tech Planet that he had received several orders for AI plush toys in the second half of this year. "To be honest, it is no different from producing other plush products. You just need to leave a pocket for the built-in movement."

Once equipped with corresponding solutions, the price of these ordinary toys can increase tenfold or even more. As the above-mentioned entrepreneur said, the hardware cost of a plush AI toy generally accounts for only one-tenth of the product price, or even less. The AI ​​solution it carries is the key to selling such toys for hundreds or thousands of yuan.

In addition, compared with the buyout characteristics of ordinary toys, the AI ​​solution also gives this type of toys a longer-tail charging model, showing a sustainable characteristic.

This charging model is centered on large models. Upward AI toy companies call services through the API of large model manufacturers and pay corresponding costs. Downward, when AI toy companies push their products to the C-end market, they will formulate subscription logic.

Tech Planet learned from the customer service of various stores that FoloToy's AI Cactus smart toy is priced at 258 yuan, with a free 6-month membership subscription, and the annual fee thereafter is 99 yuan.

According to the official introduction, the product currently supports access to many models such as ChatGPT, ByteDance, Kouzi, Tongyi Qianwen, Dark Side of the Moon, Baidu ERNIE, and Deepseek.

BubblePal, owned by Haivivi, is priced at 499 yuan, with a free three-year membership subscription, and the annual fee thereafter is 99 yuan.

In addition, the customer service of the above two brands emphasized that if you do not become a member in the future, these products will no longer be available.

On the B side, AI solutions are also the core monetization method for AI toy companies. FoloToy has a separate business of selling "movements", and Yueran Innovation had previously planned to launch the "Yueran Everything" platform to provide toy companies with a complete set of AI hardware and software solutions.

3. Before it becomes a hit, bubbles appear

Although the AI ​​toy market is booming, there are currently no blockbuster products in the market, and there are not many brands with shipments of over 10,000 units.

A hardware practitioner said that it is mainly related to the product experience. According to his observation, there are many toys with the "AI" label on the market, but in essence they are just Bluetooth speakers with children's stories and encyclopedias built into the hardware products.

In the comment section of the AI ​​toy e-commerce platform, there are endless complaints about irrelevant answers, low cost-performance, poor quality control, and frequent malfunctions. One consumer believes that this is just a speaker that combines search and voice functions, and there is no essential difference between it and products such as Xiaodu.

Even in the hardware startup group, some entrepreneurs believe that AI toys are nothing more than small smart speakers with a plush shell.

A big model practitioner told Tech Planet that the fundamental reason for this perception is that the cost of big models is decreasing, and the technologies involved, such as speech-to-text, are also open source. This has led some entrepreneurs to believe that there is no threshold to starting an AI toy business.

But in fact, the key to transforming AI toys with big models is to achieve smooth connection between product hardware and cloud big models based on algorithm capabilities, thereby improving the consumer experience. At the same time, during this training process, companies also need to have a large enough corpus. "For example, when making toys for the young children market, adult voice samples cannot be used."

Once a product is launched without being polished and settled, but is only launched to catch up with the trend, it will fall into the dilemma of users losing interest after using it for five minutes.

Before the AI ​​toy trend became popular, educational hardware such as learning machines, dictionary pens, early education machines, story machines, and word cards were also being continuously injected with "AI elements."

In this regard, an industry insider said that whether AI functions in learning machines can achieve the purpose of publicity depends on the manufacturer's own resources and accumulated data, and it will take a long time to polish. From this perspective, AI toys obviously have not yet completed the foundation for an explosion in terms of products.

However, it is undeniable that, whether it is children's toys or educational hardware, in addition to the advantages of the industrial chain, there is indeed market demand that cannot be underestimated.

Under this demand, only by making good use of the core tool of big models and continuously improving content product capabilities can AI toy companies achieve explosive growth.