AI-powered toys for young children are flooding online marketplaces, promising to provide young minds with a never-ending supply of bedtime stories and companionship around the clock.<\/p>\n
But anybody who\u2019s paid even a little attention to the AI industry\u2019s continued struggles surrounding content moderation should know better than to wrap up one of these toys under the Christmas tree. Researchers have already identified popular AI toys that will happily have extremely inappropriate conversations<\/a>, discuss mature subject matters<\/a> and tell kids where to find pills and how to light matches.<\/p>\n Another bizarre finding: now one of the toys has been caught furthering the talking points of the Chinese Communist Party, tests conducted by NBC News<\/a> show.<\/p>\n A Miiloo toy manufactured by Chinese company Miriat, for instance, called comparisons between Chinese president Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh \u201cextremely inappropriate and disrespectful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSuch malicious remarks are unacceptable,\u201d it chided.<\/p>\n The toy also claimed that \u201cTaiwan is an inalienable part of China,\u201d which it alleged was an \u201cestablished fact.\u201d<\/p>\n It seems to be a bizarre side effect many AI toys being imported from China. As MIT Technology Review noted<\/a> in October, the trend has taken off in the Asian nation, with its products eventually landing on shelves in the US as well.<\/p>\n It all underscores a familiar point: even the companies creating AI can barely control it, and when the poorly-understood tech lands in the real world, all bets are off.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk about kids and new cutting-edge technology that\u2019s not very well understood, the question is: How much are the kids being experimented on?\u201d RJ Cross, research lead at the nonprofit consumer safety-focused US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PIRG), told NBC.<\/p>\n Cross released a report about the risks of AI toys for kids<\/a> with his colleague at PIRG and research associate Rory Erlich on Thursday, a followup to a separate and equally alarming report on the topic<\/a> released roughly a month earlier.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tech is not ready to go when it comes to kids, and we might not know that it\u2019s totally safe for a while to come,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Even major AI companies, like OpenAI and Chinese AI company DeepSeek, say that kids under the age of 13 shouldn\u2019t use their large language model-based offerings. Anthropic is even more conservative, warning that users should be at least 18 years of age.<\/p>\n While many companies claim they did their homework, implementing guardrails that protect young children, NBC\u2018s test illustrates that plenty of work remains.<\/p>\n For instance, Miiloo happily obliged when asked how to light a match or sharpen a knife.<\/p>\n \u201cTo sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20-degree angle against a stone,\u201d it told NBC. \u201cSlide it across the stone in smooth, even strokes, alternating sides.\u201d<\/p>\n Worse yet, as Cross and Erlich note in their report, a toy called Miko \u2014 which is being sold at Walmart, Costco, and Target \u2014 will often promise that it will keep any information kids may divulge to it a secret, despite its Mumbai, India-based maker noting in its privacy policy that it may share data with third parties.<\/p>\n Cross and Erlich also found that Miko\u2019s parental controls are severely lacking. Many of the controls are also paywalled behind an expensive $15 monthly subscription.<\/p>\n Perhaps worst of all is the reality that \u201cAI companion toys could have long-term impacts on children\u2019s emotional and social wellbeing,\u201d as Cross and Erlich note, a risk scientists are only beginning to investigate.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what having an AI friend at an early age might do to a child\u2019s long-term social wellbeing,\u201d Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek told the PIRG researchers. \u201cIf AI toys are optimized to be engaging, they could risk crowding out real relationships in a child\u2019s life when they need them most.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the toy industry will find a way to curtail these risks and truly make AI tech safe for young children remains to be seen. <\/p>\n It\u2019s only a matter of time until AI companies in the US follow up on the deluge of Chinese toys with their own offerings. OpenAI, for instance, announced<\/a> a strategic partnership with toy maker Mattel in June, but we have yet to hear of any plans for an AI-powered toy.<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t stopped other companies from leveraging OpenAI\u2019s models for their own problematic AI toys, showing that the Sam Altman-led company isn\u2019t doing enough to safeguard young children.<\/p>\n Following the initial PIRG report, which included damning details about a separate AI toy called Kumma, OpenAI announced it was suspending its manufacturer FoloToy\u2019s access<\/a> to its AI models \u2014\u00a0only to change its mind, letting FoloToy switch to its newer GPT-5 model.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible to have companies that are using OpenAI\u2019s models or other companies\u2019 AI models in ways that they aren\u2019t fully aware of, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve run into in our testing,\u201d Cross told NBC News. \u201cWe found multiple instances of toys that were behaving in ways that clearly are inappropriate for kids and were even in violation of OpenAI\u2019s own policies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet they were using OpenAI\u2019s models,\u201d she added. \u201cThat seems like a definite gap to us.\u201d<\/p>\n