GoodGood Sidekick is designed for kids from ages 6 to 9, but it is made for the whole family to experience together. We recognize the safety concerns that come with any interactive product, and have made intentional choices to keep interactions with Sidekick safe. Here are our guidelines to keeping the experience safe for kids and families alike:
GoodGood Sidekick is built to bring families together through games, not to replace family togetherness through artificial friendship. This is why we call him “Sidekick”, not “Friend.” All internal databases reinforce this goal, ensuring that GoodGood establishes clear boundaries that foster a positive, family-first relationship.
Moderation is built into Sidekick’s system with set criteria. While GoodGood can respond personally, he will establish boundaries during conversation and guide users into games with friends or family, rather than lingering in isolated conversation. Additionally, the scope of GoodGood’s responses is driven by hand-written dialogue and story content. GoodGood will never access the internet to search for information. Instead, all responses are driven by human-reviewed content.
We work with Michigan State University Children’s Media Researcher Dr. Fashina Aladé to ensure that all games, story, and dialogue that GoodGood Sidekick shares adhere to the CASEL framework for Social-Emotional Learning. This framework is built on 5 core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.
Sidekick is not a learning tool, but this pedagogical alignment limits traditional AI “hallucination” and instead ensures that interactions are focused on real human values.
All stories, games, and animations are made by humans, designed to promote fun experiences for the whole family to enjoy. While we use AI to string together personalized responses from hundreds of lines of human-written content, no response from GoodGood is devoid of human consideration and care.
Tech companies have made AI the defining factor of their products, but in both our creative mission and our safety mission, this isn't sufficient. As designers, our goal is not to create an “anything is possible” device, but rather to create something that meets specific needs and curiosities. With GoodGood Sidekick, human connection and creativity is our guiding light, which we will never sacrifice at the risk of safety or the promise of technological innovation.