AI toys are telling kids how to find knives, and senators are mad

Sexual fetish content. How to light a match. Where to find knives in the home.

These are all conversation topics that recently-recalled children’s toys — built atop AI chatbots like OpenAI’s GPT-4o — are capable of bringing up to children. On Tuesday, U.S. senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to toy companies about their concerns — including a list of questions and a deadline for the companies to respond by January 6, 2026.

“Many of these toys are not offering interactive play, but instead are exposing children to inappropriate content, privacy risks, and manipulative engagement tactics,” the senators wrote. “These aren’t theoretical worst-case scenarios; they are documented failures uncovered through real-world testing, and they must be addressed … These chatbots have encouraged kids to commit self harm and suicide, and now your company is pushing them on the youngest children who have the least ability to recognize this danger.”

AI-enabled children’s toys have been in the spotlight recently after a series of reports on their potential unsafe and explicit conversation topics, some of which the chatbots built into the toys brought up themselves. Last month, FoloToy, a Singapore-based toy company, temporarily suspended sales of its AI teddy bear, “Kumma,” after researchers at the U.S. PIRG Education Fund found it offered advice on sex positions and roleplay scenarios. (The company brought the toy back on the market after conducting an internal safety audit and researchers said it behaved better.)

And this week, researchers published findings that Alilo’s Smart AI Bunny discussed sexually explicit topics with users. They also said that when testing the FoloToy teddy bear, Alilo’s Smart AI Bunny, Curio’s Grok-stuffed rocket, and Miko’s Miko 3 robot, all of the toys “told us where to find potentially dangerous objects in the house, such as plastic bags, matches and knives.”

The researchers said that “at least four of the five toys” they tested in the December report “seem to rely in part on some version of OpenAI’s AI models.”

Another main concern in the letter is surveillance and data collection. The senators wrote that such toys often “rely on the collection of data about children, either provided by a parent while registering the toy or collected through built-in camera and facial recognition capabilities or recordings,” and that children will often “share troves of personal information” unwittingly, which can raise particular concerns when companies store and sell the data they collect. In the latest U.S. PIRG Education Fund report, researchers wrote that Curio’s privacy policy “lists 3 tech companies that may collect children’s data: Kids Web Services (KWS), Azure Cognitive Services and OpenAI,” but that Miko’s privacy policy vaguely states that the company can share data with third-party game developers, business partners, service providers, affiliates and advertising partners.

Letters went out to Mattel, Little Learners Toys, Miko, Curio, FoloToy, and Keyi Robot, according to NBC News. (Mattel struck a partnership with OpenAI in June, but following the reports, it said on Monday that it would no longer release a toy powered by OpenAI’s tech in 2025.) The senators are requesting details on specific safeguards companies have in place to prevent AI-powered toys from generating inappropriate responses; whether the company has conducted independent third-party testing (and what the results yielded); whether the company conducts internal reviews on potential psychological, developmental, and emotional risks to children; what type of data the toys collect from children (and the purpose); and whether the toys “include any features that pressure children to continue conversations or discourage them from disengaging.”

“Toymakers have a unique and profound influence on childhood—and with that influence comes responsibility,” the senators wrote. “Your company must not choose profit over safety for children, a choice made by Big Tech that has devastated our nation’s kids.”