Tom Donaldson, senior vice president and head of Lego Group’s Creative Play Lab, tells me that the journey to make the Smart Brick as simple to use as it is was in fact mightily difficult. “We didn’t want a power switch on the side, or even a reset button,” he says, “so you won’t even find a little place to put your needle. Just doing that is an incredible challenge—to make sure that it doesn’t crash in a way that causes problems.”
“But ultimately, the idea was it has to be as simple to use as the OG, right? And simplicity is hard, and incredibly simple is really incredibly hard,” Donaldson says.
Of course, putting tech in famously analog children’s toys, especially in the LLM age, has led to worrying situations such as Kumma the AI bear that spoke of sex and pills when prompted in certain ways. Lego’s system, however, is not internet-connected, and the company claims “enhanced encryption and privacy controls … meeting the high safety standards of the Lego Group” have been employed to stop hackers attempting to program, say, sexual noises or saucy speech into the Smart Bricks.
History tells us that no system is completely safe, and while smaller-scale toys and low-volume AI cuddly animals might not attract particular attention from the hacking community, something like Smart Play—where firmware updates and diagnostics are handled via a proprietary app—from a global company like Lego may well be an enticing target.
Katriina Heljakka, a researcher in play learning at the University of Turku, Finland, and a member of the International Toy Research Association, agrees that while any Lego tech will likely be as safe as possible, there is still cause for concern. “There has been a lot of conversation about ‘internet of toys’ and the risk of hacking into these systems, especially with AI. I can see a similar threat being introduced with hackers spying for opportunities to hack everyday items,” she says. “Lego will have done its utmost trying to make this not happen once these toys get in use, but the threat is looming.”
However, Heljakka feels that Lego’s Smart Play system could help the brand with criticism the company has been getting regarding leaning towards the adult consumer in recent years, making sets that seem to be more for display than play. The interactive and responsive elements in this new brick should encourage not only continual play of the same sets, but also multigenerational family play, too.
“Lego entered this market where they see adults can build decoration things, where it goes on the shelf, and that’s it. But I would say this kind of product could be successful as an intergenerational play item,” Heljakka says. “It connects parents and children to do something together, to make these kind of discoveries with the materials and technology. This might be the way to connect technology with a traditional toy like Lego and get families doing toy play together.”
For Julia Goldin, this ability of Smart Play to encourage interaction with sets over long periods was one of the key goals of the project from the beginning. “It was one of the needs we wanted to address, because that’s how kids like to play. They revisit their toys,” she says. “We didn’t want to do one of those interactive products that’s out there like a jukebox, that’s been pre-recorded. It has three versions, and that’s it. This is completely expandable. That’s the magic that we want to create.”
Update, January 5 at 4 pm: This story was updated to include additional reporting gathered from interviews with personnel from the Lego Group.
