There’s lots of buzz about AI — but artificial intelligence can undermine children’s healthy development and pose unprecedented risks for kids and families. That’s why, 78 organizations and 80 experts in child development and technology’s impact on kids, strongly advise families not to buy AI toys for children this holiday season.
What are AI Toys?
AI toys are chatbots embedded in everyday children’s toys, like plushies, dolls, action figures, and kids’ robots. They use artificial intelligence to mimic human characteristics and emotions, acting like a friend or trusted companion. And they are marketed to children as young as infants. AI toys are being marketed to families as safe and even beneficial to learning before their impact has been assessed by independent research.
5 Reasons to Stay Away From AI Toys
AI toys use the very same AI systems that have produced unsafe, confusing, or harmful experiences for older kids and teens, including urging them to self harm or take their own lives. Yet, they are being marketed to the youngest children, who have the least ability to recognize or protect themselves from these dangers.
Equipped with friendly, caring voices and promising to be “trustworthy,” AI toys take advantage of young children, who naturally believe that friendly, caring voices can be trusted. AI toys may shape children to trust corporate-made machines in the same way they would caregivers and blur the line between real and manufactured.
AI toys promise to be “friendly” and offer empathy they can’t actually provide, confusing children’s developing understanding of healthy relationships They often smooth over conflict and offer canned comfort, which may undermine the real life-interactions children need to build social skills, self-regulation, and resilience.
Using audio, video, and even facial or gesture recognition, AI toys record and analyze sensitive family information even when they appear to be off.. Because children trust them, kids may unknowingly share their private thoughts and emotions while the toys also capture family conversations or intimate moments. Companies can then use or sell this data to make the toys more addictive, push paid upgrades, or fuel targeted advertising directed at children.
Even though they promise to boost imagination and learning, AI toys can monopolize children’s attention and crowd out actual imaginative, child-led play that research shows is foundational for creativity, emotional regulation, and real learning.
