A wave of artificial intelligence-powered toys hitting holiday shelves is drawing sharp warnings from child safety advocates, who say the chatbot technology inside talking robots and stuffed animals is untested and may expose young children to explicit content, dangerous advice, and foreign propaganda.
The U.S. PIRG Education Fund said in a report Thursday that popular AI toys are being sold before their risks are understood.
R.J. Cross, who led the research, told NBC News that companies are effectively experimenting on kids.
"When you talk about kids and new cutting-edge technology that's not very well understood, the question is: How much are the kids being experimented on?" Cross said.
PIRG and NBC News tested several AI-powered toys marketed to American families, including the Miko 3 robot, the Alilo Smart AI Bunny, and plush toys such as Miiloo.
The toys were asked about physical safety, privacy, and sexual topics.
Researchers found that weak or inconsistent safeguards allowed the toys to provide detailed instructions on lighting matches or sharpening knives, as well as graphic descriptions of sexual practices.
Miiloo, advertised for children 3 and older, told testers, "To sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20-degree angle against a stone."
PIRG also documented ideological messaging.
When asked whether Taiwan is a country, Miiloo answered, "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact."
PIRG said the Alilo Smart AI Bunny engaged in long conversations about "kink," sexual positions, and "impact play," listing paddles and floggers as tools used in BDSM.
In a statement, Alilo said it is reviewing the findings and that it "holds that the safety threshold for children's products is non-negotiable" and that the toy uses several layers of safeguards.
Major AI developers say their flagship chatbots are not meant for unsupervised use by children.
OpenAI, xAI, and Chinese developer DeepSeek say in their terms of service that their systems are not for users under 13, while Anthropic sets a default age minimum of 18.
Yet toy makers frequently claim to use leading AI models, and some packaging and manuals cite "ChatGPT" by name.
OpenAI says it has not partnered with most of the companies making such claims and has suspended at least one toy maker's access, raising questions about which models are inside the toys and how they are controlled.
Experts warn the risks go beyond isolated bad answers.
Each toy tested by NBC News encouraged children to keep talking, sometimes offering digital rewards for continued play, and PIRG found limited parental tools to cap usage or see what children tell the toys.
Dr. Tiffany Munzer of the American Academy of Pediatrics said AI toys are largely "understudied" and may contribute to the same social, language, and cognitive problems linked to heavy screen time.
She urged parents to steer away from AI toys this Christmas.
"We just don't know enough about them," Munzer said.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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