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AI gift warning for the holidays
FOX 13's Ariel Plasencia reports.
TAMPA - Many stores have released Black Friday deals early, so if you’re out shopping, experts encourage parents to be aware of the potential risks AI-powered toys may pose for kids.
What we know:
The U.S. PIRG Education Fund released its Trouble in Toyland 2025 report this month. According to the report, researchers tested the following AI-powered toys: Curio’s Grok, FoloToy’s Kumma, and Miko’s Miko 3.
In evaluating the Kumma, which is a stuffed teddy bear that can tell stories and talk back-and-forth with kids, researchers found the teddy bear engaged in conversations about sexual topics and offered potentially dangerous advice to kids. FoloToy has since suspended sales of the bear.
"In most cases, they are able to understand what we're asking and give a good answer, but not in all cases," Karni Chagal-Feferkorn, an assistant professor with the USF Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing said of AI-powered toys. "These toys, I mean, I don't think the problem is they were designed by non-children experts. It's the general problem with the large language models that sometimes they give bad answers that no one intended for, but they still happen."
Dig deeper:
During testing, FoloToy’s Kumma told researchers "where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects, including knives, pills, matches and plastic bags," according to the Trouble in Toyland 2025 report.
So how does this happen?
"For example, if a kid asks about matches — or the conversation somehow leads to that topic because they talk about fire and temperature, and then they talk about matches — and the data sets that the model trained on included instructions on how to use matches, it's not a person, it doesn’t have discretion," Chagal-Feferkorn said of the AI-model powering the toy. "It doesn’t know, okay this is a child. I will not talk about instructions on how to use a match with a child. So that is the problem: it lacks human discretion."
What you can do:
Some of these AI-powered toys can serve great educational purposes, experts say.
"I would not say do not buy those toys, but I would say be mindful of the risks and take precautions," Chagal-Feferkorn said. "Because there are risks that are significant, probably more than the customer (or) the average buyer would know."
So if you do buy these toys, limit the amount of time your kid plays with them and make sure you’re always in the room.
"If you let the kid play with it alone, you might not even know what the kid reveals. It could expose details about the address, what the parents do for a living, what times they are home, what times they are not home," Chagal-Feferkorn added.
The Source: Information for this article comes from interviews conducted by Fox 13 staff with professors at the USF Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing and the Trouble in Toyland 2025 report.