Hands-on with Stickerbox, the AI-powered sticker maker for kids

There’s a new AI-powered game for kids called Stickerbox, and before you groan, I’m here to tell you that it’s surprisingly fun.

The Stickerbox, a product originating from Brooklyn-based startup Hapiko, is a voice-activated label printer. The device takes any creative idea you have and turns it into a printed poster that you can then color, peel and stick anywhere.

Before trying the device itself, I have to admit that I came with a preconceived negative bias – as did my fellow tester (my daughter). Our initial reactions were similar: “Artificial intelligence that prints labels? I prefer to design and print myself“.

After trying out the review unit the company sent, we were won over.

I realized that the sticker box could represent a new form of creative play—one that doesn’t outsource a child’s imagination to an AI model as much as you might think.

AI label printer test

The $99.99 toy itself is a small, bright red box with a black-and-white screen and a large white “push-to-talk” button on top. It comes with three rolls of paper, equivalent to 180 stickers, plus a power cord and colored pens.

The box’s color scheme is reminiscent of Etch A Sketch, which makes sense, since the Stickerbox seems like a modern take on that concept. In the case of Etch A Sketch, you have to learn how to control the 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 direct the AI ​​model.

Children don’t think about how to improve their engineering skills, of course; They are just exploring their imagination and enjoying seeing their ideas come to life. Any improvement in their driving abilities is a side effect.

To initially set up the device, a parent will need help. Much like adding a smart speaker to your home Wi-Fi network, you first have to connect to Stickerbox’s Wi-Fi network, then enter information to connect to your home network. The setup process, which took just a minute, went off without a hitch.

Using Stickerbox is simple. You press a button, describe an image out loud, then release the button to see your text appear on the screen, followed by an AI-generated image while the printer outputs a physical copy.

There is serendipity in the experience where you think of an idea and then hold it in your hand within seconds.

The device’s thermal photo printer requires no ink, and the paper is BPS and BPA-free, making it safe to use.

The printed label is easy to tear off and can then be colored using the colored pens 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 calm or meditative aspects that come with coloring, similar to giving children a coloring book.

This ends up offering a healthy balance between using potentially addictive technology and then slowing down to engage in real-world activity. It also helped address potential boredom.

The more you use Stickerbox, the more you realize how complex your prompts are. Not only do you have to ask for a basic image, like “magical unicorn,” you can speak to Stickerbox using long commands to train ideas, and the AI ​​will analyze what you mean. (This is especially useful because children don’t tend to explain things in a straightforward way.)

Creating “artificial intelligence for children”

Hapiko, the company behind Stickerbox, was founded this year by CEO Arun Gupta and CTO Robert (Bob) Whitney. The duo originally met while working at e-commerce marketplace Grailed, where Whitney was director of engineering and Gupta was CEO. (The company was sold to GOAT Group in 2022.)

Before Grailed, Gupta founded and launched the Y Combinator-backed sleep tracker WakeMate.

Meanwhile, Whitney worked as director of engineering in the games department at The New York Times, as the publisher shifted from offering only crosswords to becoming a full-fledged gaming app, acquiring Wordle and launching other games like Connections and Strads. While this experience taught him a lot about what makes a great consumer-facing product, his later time 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 requested a coloring page that he didn’t have on hand, he turned to ChatGPT to create a printable image.

“I made it for him – a tiger eating ice cream. He’d never seen a printer before. I got our HP printer out from under the bed – I dusted it off and printed it out for him, and he happily ran over and started coloring it,” Whitney explained. “But after a minute, the gears were turning, and he came back to me and said, ‘I want a lizard that rides a skateboard.’ And I said, OK, great, let me do that for you.

His son was so happy with the process of being able to say something and see it come to life that he realized there could be something to it.

“I just saw this magical look on his face — like pure magic,” Whitney noted.

The co-founders were also thinking about how AI technology could provide many new experiences, but most of them weren’t intended for kids.

“Nobody is building AI specifically for kids,” Gupta said. “So that’s what we’re looking for.” “What are the right guardrails? What are the right methods? What are the right products?”

They realized that children have a wonderful imagination, ideal 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. “I think we are literally the first person in the world to put a photo model inside a box,” Gupta said.

Built for updates

Under the hood, Stickerbox actually uses a range of AI models, including its own technology focused on making the device safe for kids. It will not respond to requests for harmful content, such as violence or sexual images, and will filter out obscene words. And if you try to use a fairly innocuous command, like “breast,” a random label will be printed that may be vaguely related to the word. (For example, you might get a generic cartoon girl, but not a big-breasted girl.)

After trying and failing to get a bad result, most kids will likely go back to just asking the device for silly pictures instead.

“We want to be a trusted brand for parents where you don’t have to look over your kids’ shoulder and ask: ‘What are they doing? How are they using this?'” Gupta said.

Currently, the company generates some revenue from hardware sales, but keeps the cost of restocking paper low. It’s only $5.99 for three rolls, which equates to 180 labels. (A promotion offering six spins with every purchase is currently running now.)

Over time, the team plans to explore adding premium features, including a way to upload your own photo to imagine yourself in cool 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 the most recent update added new guardrails to steer kids toward more original designs.

A soon-to-be-launched companion app lets you view past creations and save favorites, and could eventually serve as a home for premium features.

Sticker box is Backed by $7 million Funded by Maveron, Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, the Allen Institute’s AI2 Incubator, several angels, including Matt Brezina, and product leaders from other consumer applications.