AI Toys Are Unsafe for Kids, Advocacy Groups Say

They're cute, even cuddly, and promise learning and companionship—but artificial intelligence toys are not safe for kids, according to children's and consumer advocacy groups urging parents not to buy them during the holiday season.

• These toys, marketed to kids as young as 2, are generally powered by AI models that have already been shown to harm children and teenagers, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to an advisory published Thursday by the children's advocacy group Fairplay and signed by more than 150 organizations and individual experts such as child psychiatrists and educators, the AP reports.

• "The serious harms that AI chatbots have inflicted on children are well-documented, including fostering obsessive use, having explicit sexual conversations, and encouraging unsafe behaviors, violence against others, and self-harm," Fairplay said.
• AI toys, made by companies including Curio Interactive and Keyi Technologies, are often marketed as educational, but Fairplay says they can displace important creative and learning activities. They promise friendship but disrupt children's relationships and resilience, the group said.
• "What's different about young children is that their brains are being wired for the first time and developmentally it is natural for them to be trustful," said Rachel Franz, director of Fairplay's Young Children Thrive Offline Program.
• Fairplay has been warning about AI toys for years. They just weren't as advanced as they are today. A decade ago, during an emerging fad of internet-connected toys and AI speech recognition, the group helped lead a backlash against Mattel's talking Hello Barbie doll that it said was recording and analyzing children's conversations.

• Though AI toys are mostly sold online and more popular in Asia than elsewhere, Franz said some have started to appear on US store shelves and more could be on the way. "Everything has been released with no regulation and no research, so it gives us extra pause when all of a sudden we see more and more manufacturers, including Mattel, who recently partnered with OpenAI, potentially putting out these products," Franz said.
• It's the second big warning against AI toys since US PIRG last week called out the trend in its annual "Trouble in Toyland" report. "We found some of these toys will talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics, will offer advice on where a child can find matches or knives, act dismayed when you say you have to leave, and have limited or no parental controls," the report said. Some AI toymakers pushed back, with Curio Interactive saying it has "meticulously designed" guardrails to protect children.

• Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon and social scientist who studies early brain development, says young children don't have the conceptual tools to understand what an AI companion is. While kids have always bonded with toys through imaginative play, when they do this they use their imagination to create both sides of a pretend conversation, "practicing creativity, language, and problem-solving," she says. "An AI toy collapses that work. It answers instantly, smoothly, and often better than a human would. We don't yet know the developmental consequences of outsourcing that imaginative labor to an artificial agent—but it's very plausible that it undercuts the kind of creativity and executive function that traditional pretend play builds."
• Suskind and children's advocates say analog toys are a better bet for the holidays. "Kids need lots of real human interaction. Play should support that, not take its place," she says. "Here's the brutal irony: when parents ask me how to prepare their child for an AI world, unlimited AI access is actually the worst preparation possible."