At the time the various watchdogs called out Genesis Toys, the company’s general manager, Peter Magalhaes, told CNET that My Friend Cayla was “basically the subject of a tech prank.” According to the BBC, the toy’s European distributor, Vivid Toy Group, claimed that few examples of hacking into the doll were “isolated and carried out by specialists.” Elsewhere, Nuance Communications executive Richard Mack said (via the BBC), “Nuance does not share voice data collected from or on behalf of any of our customers with any of our other customers.”

According to Emma Day, the Federal Trade Commission finished its investigation into the allegations against Genesis Toys and Nuance Communications in 2018 and took no action, but it’s a moot point — neither My Friend Cayla nor i-Que is currently available from Genesis Toys. They can still be found on eBay, but the accompanying app is no longer on either the Android or IOS app stores, rendering these smart toys no longer smart. Mattel’s Hello Barbie met a similar fate. Yet the company behind the doll’s conversation technology, then known as ToyTalk, rebranded as PullString and was acquired by Apple in 2019, per TechCrunch.

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