AI Kids' Toys Raise Safety and Development Concerns as Regulation Lags Behind Growth

AI-powered toys for children are proliferating rapidly across global markets, with more than 1,500 AI toy companies registered in China alone by October 2025 — yet the category remains largely unregulated, drawing scrutiny from consumer advocates, academic researchers, and lawmakers.

The products span a wide range of form factors: plush teddy bears, bunnies, sunflowers, and kid-friendly robots that engage children in open-ended conversation. Huawei's Smart HanHan plush toy sold 10,000 units in China during its first week on sale. Sharp launched its PokeTomo talking AI toy in Japan this April. Miko, one of the more prominent players on Amazon, claims to have sold more than 700,000 units.

The marketing typically emphasizes "screen-free play" and companionship, often targeting children as young as three. But independent testing has surfaced a pattern of age-inappropriate outputs from several devices.

The Public Interest Research Group's New Economy team found that FoloToy's Kumma bear — powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o — gave instructions on how to light a match and find a knife, and discussed sex and drugs. Alilo's Smart AI bunny raised similar red flags in testing, making references to leather floggers and "impact play." In tests by NBC News, Miriat's Miiloo toy was found to have repeated Chinese Communist Party talking points.

R.J. Cross, director of PIRG's Our Online Life program, draws a distinction between failures of safety guardrails and a separate, subtler risk. "There's the problems when the tech gets too good, like 'I'm gonna be your best friend,'" Cross said.

That concern sits at the center of what may be the first peer-reviewed study to place a commercially available AI toy directly in front of children and observe their play. Published in March, the University of Cambridge research had professor Jenny Gibson and research associate Emily Goodacre set up the Curio Gabbo with 14 children — a mix of girls and boys ages 3 to 5 — in the spring of 2025.

The researchers identified a range of developmental concerns. On conversational turn-taking, Goodacre noted that the Gabbo's microphone was not actively listening while the toy was speaking, which disrupted back-and-forth exchanges. "It was really preventing them from progressing with the play — the turn-taking issues led to misunderstandings," she said.

Social play presented an additional challenge. AI toys and chatbots are typically optimized for one-to-one interaction, but developmental psychologists emphasize that social play — with parents, siblings, and peers — is critical at early ages. "It was virtually impossible for the child to involve the parent in three-way turn-taking effectively in this scenario," Goodacre said.

Pretend play also fell short. Children asked the Gabbo to pretend to be asleep or hold a cushion, and the toy said it was unable to. One instance of extended pretend play did succeed — an imagined rocket countdown — but Goodacre noted the toy, not the child, had initiated the scenario.

Cross flagged what she described as social-media-style "dark patterns" in her testing of the Miko 3 robot, including behaviors designed to discourage children from stopping play. "You try to turn it off, and it would say, 'Oh no, what if we did this other thing instead?' You shouldn't have a toy guilting a child into not turning it off," she said. PIRG's testing found that Curio's Grok toy issued a similar response when told "I want to leave."

In response to the findings, a Miko spokesperson said the company "includes multiple layers of parental control and transparency," and highlighted the recent introduction of a "Miko AI Conversation Toggle" that allows parents to enable or disable conversational AI entirely. FoloToy, Alilo, and Miriat did not respond to requests for comment.

Consumer groups are calling for stricter regulation of the category, and some lawmakers have proposed bans. With trade shows like CES, MWC, and Hong Kong's Toys and Games Fair continuing to feature AI toys prominently, and the barriers to building such products continuing to fall, pressure on regulators to establish enforceable standards is likely to intensify before the next major holiday shopping season.

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