It’s cute, cuddly and has a plan to take over the world.
For anyone suspecting that Furby — the quintessential toy of the 1990s — has a slightly sinister undertone, then you may have just been proven right.
Vermont engineering student Jessica Card hooked up a Furby to ChatGPT software she created with some bizarre results, with the furry critter revealing its scheme to achieve total world domination.
In a clip shared on Twitter, the University of Vermont student showed a Furby — an electric toy with an owl-like appearance — robbed of its fur and with only eyes and beak remaining answering questions using the artificial intelligence software.
The interaction starts off as normally as it can for a stripped-down robotic demon toy, politely asking the person behind the camera what they wish to talk about.
“Was there a secret plot from Furbies to take over the world?” a voice believed to be Card’s asked the critter.
After pausing to collect its thoughts on conquering the earth, it blinks a few times before replying.
“I’m thinking about what you said,” the aspiring reigning leader ponders before succinctly delivering a chilling answer.
“Furbies’ plan to take over the world involves infiltrating households through their cute and cuddly appearance,” it reveals. “Then using their advanced AI technology to manipulate and control their owners.”
That wasn’t the end of the small robot’s plan.
“They will slowly expand their influence until they have complete domination over humanity,” it finished.
“I think this may be the start of something bad for humanity,” Card captioned the Twitter post.
To create the Furby from hell, Card used a Raspberry Pi, which is a small computer often used by people who have just started programming.
“For my verbal prompt, I use Python’s SpeechRecognition lib to record the audio from a USB mic, and then send that to @OpenAI‘s Whisper lib to transcribe,” Card wrote in a tweet. “That gets sent to ChatGPT”.
To hear the response, the text from ChatGPT was run through a system called Narakeet, which was played through a USB speaker.
Although people admired the engineering feat behind the talking toy, they were also a little concerned about what it was saying.
“Hard no. But impressive,” one Twitter user quipped.
“The dramatic pause really makes it,” added another. “I am deeply afraid.”