Talking Angela developer: Facebook-fuelled paedophile hoax is 'ridiculous'

Outfit7 boss Samo Login to parents: ‘Everybody can easily find out that it’s not a person on the other side’

Talking Angela is an app where children play with an animated virtual cat: customising her appearance, getting her to repeat their words, and text-chatting to the kind of artificial-intelligence bot that’s been around since the early days of home computing.

It shouldn’t be controversial, but it is. Massively. That’s mainly because of a year-old Facebook hoax claiming the talking cat was the cuddly face (and squeaky voice) of a paedophile ring, which reappeared on the social network this month, and went viral.

“Do not download the app Talking Angela. It is a hacker that is sitting behind a webcam, able to see you but you can’t see him. ‘Angela’ asks you very personal and perverted questions,” claimed one widely circulated warning.

“CHECK YOUR KID’S TABLET OR PHONES TO SEE IF THEY HAVE THIS APP ITS A PEDO RING,” shouted another. “THEY CAN SEE YOUR CHILD AND HACK IN TO THEIR PICS AND THEIR FRIENDS LIST…”

No, it’s not a hacker sitting behind a webcam. No, the questions aren’t perverted. No, there isn’t a “paedo ring” that can get access to children’s friend lists. And yet judging by the more than 700,000 page views so far for my article this week examining what Talking Angela is really saying to kids – parents around the world have been spooked by the warnings.

The app is the work of Outfit7, part of its Talking Tom and Friends series that currently has more than 230 million monthly active users, after 1.5bn app downloads since the first app was released in June 2010.

Chief executive Samo Login and senior brand director Randeep Sidhu talked to the Guardian to give their view on the hoax, as well as on other criticism of Talking Angela’s suitability for children. Starting with some of those claims on Facebook.

‘We’d need an army of paedophiles’

“Obviously, it’s a hoax. I don’t know how it got started or how it got traction. These things just happen,” said Login, pointing out that the hacker/webcam claims run into trouble when you consider that Talking Angela has been downloaded 57m times so far.

“We have millions of users every day using this app. Can you imagine, we’d need an army of paedophiles. It’s ridiculous,” he said, before suggesting that if parents use the app themselves for even a short period of time, they’ll feel reassured that Angela really is a virtual cat with a chat-bot handling conversational duties.

“Even though it could be easily believed that you are talking to a person, if you pay some attention, everybody can easily find out that it’s not a person on the other side: it’s only a semi-intelligent conversation that you’re having,” he said.

“We have no communication to our servers: the brains of the engine are in the mobile app, and everything that the engine responds is pre-scripted.” Sidhu chipped in: “We’ve got some incredibly sophisticated technology based on a lot of work, but it’s actually just programmed intelligence.”

Some of the concerns about Talking Angela have been around the questions she asks: the user’s name, age, what they like doing at school, and so on. This information might not be transmitted to a “paedo ring”, but it’s a fair question to ask what is happening to it.

The company has already launched a FAQ on its website claiming that the questions are used “to optimise the app’s content”, for example, using the users’ age to dictate suitable topics of conversation.

Outfit7 says it sees “aggregated” data – “we will be able to see how many users of each age we have, but will not be able to determine the name and age of a particular user” – and also harvests “anonymised and obfuscated data log files” to see what topics are proving popular in the app’s text-chat mode, so it can program Angela with more and better responses.

“Yes, we do collect the conversations, but we are only interested in how certain topics are accessed, and which are the most popular. We remove all the personal information – names, addresses and so on – on the device before transmitting the information,” said Login.

“It’s purely to get information on what’s interesting and engaging for users,” added Sidhu. “We take out anything that could be potentially identifiable. We’re over-cautious in how we filter information, to make sure nothing identifiable can leave the app.”

‘With kids, you can never be too cautious’

When I used Talking Angela this week for the article on what she’s really saying, I had a few concerns as a parent. First, that despite there being a child mode which turned the text-chat feature off, it was far too easy for children to toggle child mode off and bring it back.

Second, that features like YouTube weren’t behind a parental gate at all, potentially sending kids out into the unregulated online video waters. On iOS, Talking Angela isn’t categorised as a children’s app for Apple’s Kids category, where it would face stricter rules about making it harder to leave the app. Its lack of these restrictions feels like a problem.

“We are implementing a parental gate,” said Login, although he suggested that children old enough to use the app’s text-chat feature are probably old enough to understand any parental gate instructions too – for example, being asked to swipe two fingers down on the screen, or convert a written number into figures.

“Even after adding a parental gate, if someone can use the chat-bot, they can probably break the lock,” said Sidhu. “But with kids, you can never be too cautious, and in some cases it can be beneficial, so that’s why we are implementing it,” added Login. “But the sole purpose of the chat-bot is entertainment.”

Outfit7 faces a delicate task in explaining its policies, as a developer that claims its apps appeal to children and adults alike. Some of Angela’s flirtatious chat-bot banter sounds innocent for adults, but inappropriate for children, for example. Some people have also picked up on the inclusion of a “giggle juice” item that seemingly simulates alcohol. Again, fine for adults, not so fine for children.

Would it be more responsible to launch separate apps for children and adults? Login argued that it would be a commercial mistake. “We have a really wide audience: that’s why we always need to take into account that the apps need to be safe for children, and also interesting for adults,” he said.

“In my opinion, focusing on a very narrow user base in our sector would make our lives much harder. It’s much harder to stay on top of the chart if your target demographic is very narrow. That’s why we create apps that can satisfy kids and adults.”

‘The best thing is to tell the truth’

It’s a risky line of defence, potentially opening Outfit7 to accusations that it puts its commercial growth ahead of parents’ concerns about their children. Likewise his suggestion that “if parents install the app, they should also be responsible for activating the child mode” – true enough, although as he admits, this should sit alongside the responsibilities of app developers, rather than replace them.

For now Outfit7 is trying to combat the hoaxes by speaking publicly, launching its FAQ and relying on that 230m-strong community to put the word out. “You can’t have a real answer to this kind of virality when it happens. We cannot take any measures that will stop it. So the best thing is to tell the truth. What else can we do?” said Login.

“This has been a terrible thing to happen, and very upsetting. The people who make these apps are people who care. Some of the comments online have been incredibly hurtful: they never set out to make anything of that kind,” added Sidhu. “What’s uplifting is that so many new fans and existing fans have been debunking a lot of this stuff online and supporting us.”

For now, Outfit7 is pressing on with new apps, and with a Talking Tom and Friends TV show, building on its previous web series with Disney, which was a YouTube hit. Talking Angela, meanwhile, has rocketed back up the app store charts in the last week, even with that backdrop of fake warnings.

“Sometimes when you have a crisis, the people who rally around you are the ones who care. We feel supported by the people who actually use our apps,” said Sidhu. “I think we have developed trust with the user base, and it’s growing,” added Login.

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