A Halloween skeleton on Alameda's Lincoln Avenue is talking back to trick-or-treaters this year, thanks to a 9-year-old who rewired it with a tiny computer and AI, CBS News Bay Area reported.
Why it matters: The display, named Uncle Murray, has become a neighborhood attraction and a kid-sized example of hands-on tinkering with AI.
From three sentences to small talk
Nathalie, a fourth grader at Edison School in Alameda, saw a plastic skeleton at Home Depot in August that could say three recorded sentences, according to CBS News Bay Area and Macaroni KID Hayward-San Leandro-Castro Valley.
Her father, Jim Chabas, told CBS he first told her it wasn't possible to make it talk. The family then asked AI whether the idea was doable, and it said yes.
According to the project's website, Nathalie used a multimeter to figure out which wires moved the skeleton's arm and lit its eyes. She picked his voice out of 10, wrote who he is, and installed "a tiny computer the size of a cookie" as his new brain. Early versions talked too fast and stopped listening, so she tested him for hours and fixed one problem at a time.
Meet Uncle Murray
In his backstory, Murray was a scientist when he was alive and was terrible at stairs. He loves kids, candy, jokes, "explosions (the safe kind)" and the color pink, according to the project's website and Macaroni KID. Nathalie told CBS he came up with parts of his background himself, which surprised her.
Nobody scripts his answers ahead of time, Macaroni KID reported, so no two conversations are the same.
What's next
Nathalie told CBS she's thinking about talking displays for other holidays and possibly a skeleton wife for Murray next year. He'll be chatting with visitors through Halloween.