Have you ever thought your day-to-day might be enhanced by a running commentary from Optimus Prime? Sixth Wall, the AI offshoot of Hasbro, has got great news for you.
Hold music replaced by chitchat with Mr. Monopoly, a digital personal assistant with the voice and personality of Megatron and maybe even the surreal experience of watching G.I. Joe episodes with Cobra Commander adding live, RiffTrax-style commentary could be coming soon.
It’s all part of a plan by Sixth Wall, an AI offshoot of Hasbro, to marry licensable characters with unlimited AI possibilities.
“We started just testing internally,” Sixth Wall CEO Bertie Thomson told me in an interview following a media event in Los Angeles last week. “What would it look like if you took a Peppa Pig doll and rigged her with a Raspberry Pi and ElevenLabs and chatted back and forth, and it turns out the answer is incredibly fun.”
Creating these lighthearted moments with licensed IP and characters isn’t an entirely new concept. Services like Character.AI (which just filed for bankruptcy amid legal controversy) and others have made it possible for people to take beloved fictional folks for a conversational ride for years.
What’s different about Sixth Wall and Hasbro’s work is not just the way in which they deploy the audio interactions with characters, but also how…
