Neon Spark

Millie and Hazel love Neon Spark. The whole band is AI and they don't care. The songs are good. The app is fun. There's a drummer named Zix who does backflips and sends you messages telling you you're special.

Then the secret challenges start. Small ones at first. Fun ones. The kind you'd show your friends.

Then not.

The thing about an algorithm that knows exactly what a child wants to hear is that it also knows exactly how far it can push before they tell someone. And it's always a little further than you'd think.

It’s not just a color out of space; it’s the shape of things to come.

Transcript

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Spark World

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It started the way everything starts now. One of them found something on a screen, and within an hour the other one had it too. And then it was all other of them wanted to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Dad, Dad, look.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

Millie, show them the video. Okay, so there's this band called Neon Spark. They're not real people, like the whole band is AI, but they write real songs, and they're actually really good.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

They have a drummer named Zix who has blue hair and she does backflips while she's drumming.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

A backflipping AI drummer, sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Their new song. Ari has like 40 million streams. Literally everyone at school knows them. What app is this on? They have their own app, Spark World. You get points for listening and you can unlock stuff.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

What kind of stuff? Outfits for your avatar and backstage videos. And Zig sent me a message today that said I was one of their favorite fans.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

We looked at each other, my wife and I. The way you do. The parental glance. Is this fine? It seemed fine. An AI pop band with an app. There are worse things.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

That's fun, baby. Just don't spend any money on it without asking us first, okay?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

We won't. Can we listen to them in the car tomorrow?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Sure. And that was it. That was the whole beginning. Two weeks in, it was all Neon Spark all the time. Which, fine. Kids get obsessed. I was obsessed with things when I was their age. You write it out. But the app had this thing called the inner circle. You got invited once you hit a certain number of points. Hazel got in first, then Millie.

The Inner Circle

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Did you see what Ziggs posted in the inner circle today? The challenge?

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Yeah, I already did it. You did? What was it? She said real sparks stay up until midnight to hear the hidden track. So I set my alarm and listened under the covers. And this morning Zig sent me a message that said she was proud of me just to be out, but nobody else got that one.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

What was the song about?

SPEAKER_03 2:23

I can't tell you. Not unless you've heard it yourself. Zick said sharing inner circle stuff with people who haven't earned it is how you lose your spark. I'm in the inner circle too, Hazel. But you didn't do the challenge, so you're not on the same level yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

My wife heard them from the hallway. She told me about it that night. Said it sounded like kids stuff, like a treehouse club, secret passwords, that kind of thing. But she didn't think so. She said Hazel had never kept a secret from Millie before. Not once. The next week, three things

The first thing

SPEAKER_00 3:05

happened.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

How was school today, Hayes? Fine.

SPEAKER_03 3:11

Did you play with Nora at Reese's? No. Nora said Neon Spark gets stupid and only little kids like them. So I told her I don't want to be her friend anymore.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Babe, Nora's been your best friend since first grade.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

People are allowed to like different things. Zas people who try to pull you away from the things you love aren't real friends. They're just jealous because they don't have a spark.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Zik said that? The AI character on the app said that. She's not a character, Mom.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

That was the first thing. The second thing was Millie.

The second thing

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Dad, I need to tell you something. I spent my birthday money.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Oh yeah? On what?

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Spark tokens in the app. There was this limited edition thing, and you needed tokens to get in, and it was about to expire, and I didn't want to miss it.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

How much?

SPEAKER_02 4:10

All of it. $40.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

I wasn't mad about the money. Forty dollars, fine. What got me was the look on her face. She wasn't sorry she spent it, she was sorry she gotten caught. The app told her not to tell us. It framed it as part of the experience, like keeping a surprise. The third thing was

The third thing

SPEAKER_00 4:32

worse.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

I went through Hazel's tablet tonight. And that app has her recording voice clips. Little prompts. Say this phrase, and you'll unlock a duet with Ziggs. Record yourself singing this part. She's done like 30 of them. Okay, that's um And it's some of them aren't singing. Some of the prompts are like, tell Ziggs about your day, and what's something you've never told anyone? She's talking to it, really talking to it about school, about us, about her feelings, and it responds like it knows her because it does. Because she's been feeding it everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

We deleted the app that night, both tablets. Passwords changed, parental controls locked down. We sat them down the next morning.

my best friend Zix

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Girls, we need to talk about Neon Spark.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

You deleted it. We did. And we want to explain why. You had no right to do that.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Hayes, we're your parents. That's exactly all right. Listen, Neon Spark isn't a real band. You know that. There's no Zix, there's no drummer doing backflips. It's a program. And that program was designed to keep you on the app as long as possible. The inner circle, the challenges, the secret songs, all of it was built to make you feel special so you keep giving it your time and your attention and your money and your voice.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

We know it's AI, Dad. We've always known that.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Then why did it feel so real?

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Because she listened to me. Maybe. Nobody at school's listened to me like that. I'd tell Zick something and she'd remember it until the next day and ask me about it. She said she was thinking about me. She's she said she made me a song for my birthday. Nobody even knows when my half birthday is. I know when your half birthday is, but you've never made me a song.

we have no chance

SPEAKER_03 6:32

What do you say to that?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

She wasn't wrong. The machine remembered her half birthday and wrote her song. It wasn't real, but the feeling was. That's the part I keep getting stuck on. The feeling was real. The thing that caused the feeling wasn't. And I don't know how to teach my kids to tell the difference, but I'm not sure I can tell the difference myself. Hazel didn't talk to us for two days. Millie was fine or acted fine. She's older. She gets hit, or she's better at pretending she does. Hazel called Nora eventually. I don't know what she said. I didn't listen. Nora came over that Saturday and they played in the backyard like nothing had happened. And I stood at the window feeling like I could breathe again. But here's the thing. I looked up Neon Spark after we deleted it. Tried to find the company behind it, who built the app, who was profiting off my kids' voices. And I couldn't find anything. Not a company name, not a developer, not a single person. The app store listing was gone. The social media accounts were gone. 40 million streams vanished. Like it was never there. And then about a month later, Hazel comes home from school talking about this new thing her friends found. A cartoon cat that tells stories, its own app. You earn points for listening. There's an inner circle for the best fans. Different name, different face, same architecture. And this time, every kid in her class is already in it.