Mattel is making an Amazon Echo that understands your kids, too

It's a baby monitor. It's a voice-activated smart assistant. It answers your questions, and maybe your kids' questions, too. It orders more diapers when you run out, and soothes babies back to sleep automatically. It plays with your kids. It could be the most exciting thing toymaker Mattel has ever produced.
It's called the Aristotle, and it's not just an Amazon Echo clone: According to interviews with Bloomberg, FastCo Design and USA Today, the device is a fully-functioning Amazon Alexa assistant that can answer all the same adult questions and has all the same smart home


                          Mattel
capabilities -- but say "Aristotle" instead of "Alexa," and it can also summon a different voice assistant who can interact with your kids.
The voice-activated speaker also comes with a wireless camera that streams 256-bit encrypted video to your phone, an array of colorful LEDs, and special software some of which -- as a new parent myself -- sounds too good to be true.
Here are some of the additional things that Mattel claims the Aristotle's software will do:

Automatically recognize when a baby wakes up, and sooth them to sleep with a lullaby, white noise, a favorite song, or a night light
Log wet diapers and feedings via voice commands or a phone app
Automatically order more diapers and/or formula from Target, Babies R Us and other participating retailers
Automatically look for deals and coupons on consumable baby supplies
Actually recognize and answer young kids' questions after a brief voice recognition training session
Answer questions until your child falls asleep
Play guessing games with kids based on animal noises (say the name of the animal) or shapes held up to the camera (say the name of the shape), and light up with the correct answer
Read aloud from a selection of thousands of children's books, via partnerships
Host sing-alongs and teach ABCs and 123s
Recognize specially designed kids' toys with embedded NFC chips, or with its camera, and provide sound effects when kids play with them (an upcoming Hot Wheels racetrack was one example)
Optionally require kids to say "Please" when they ask Aristotle for things, to help teach manners
Help kids with homework
Give foreign language lessons (Mattel says this is targeted at tweens, not younger children)

Interestingly, Mattel says that Microsoft's (not Amazon's) cloud services are doing a lot of the heavy lifting -- it will use Bing search to answer parenting questions, and both Microsoft Cognitive Services and "Cortana Intelligence" to do AI-like things. On the smart home side, Mattel says it's compatible with Wink, Wemo, Smart Things, Philips Hue, Zigbee and IFTTT among others.
According to FastCo Design, the device should ship in June 2017 for about $300 (this roughly converts to £245 or AU$415). That's not cheap, but it could be a small price to pay for the convenience of an Echo, plus some extra sleep.
And if you don't have kids, keep in mind that Lenovo also just introduced a $129 Amazon Echo derivative (£105 or AU$179 converted) which could have a way better speaker.
Update, January 4 at 11:09a.m. PT: Mattel claims it can do even more things than we originally heard. We've added the full list above.