I, for one, welcome our new Furby overlords
Developer Jessica Card has connected a Furby to ChatGPT and apparently, it has things to do with its new found life.
Card upgraded the Furby from its 1998 standard model with a Raspberry Pi 4 computer, USB microphone, and a Python speech recognition module. This enables it to become a robot chat partner, or evil mastermind depending on your perspective.
The USB microphone and Python speech recognition module record the queries before sending them to OpenAI’s Whisper speech-to-text-library. ChatGPT then responds via text prompt and then converted to speech using Narakeet’s text-to-speech voice-over library. The Furby speaks through a USB-powered speaker, while its movements are controlled by Raspberry Pi using an H bridge motor controller.
Card admits that she is not sure that it was a good idea creating her own Frankenstein Furby monster.
“I think this may be the start of something bad for humanity.” she said.
You can see it in action here.
