Happy holidays: AI-enabled toys teach kids how to play with fire, sharp objects

Picture the scene: It's Christmas morning and your child is happily chatting with the AI-enabled teddy bear you got them when you hear it telling them about sexual kinks, where to find the knives, and how to light matches. This is not a hypothetical scenario.  As we head into the holiday season, consumer watchdogs at the …

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

And none of them would be legal in EU

and many other countries. Only some countries set winnings above human life.

[doublelayer]

Re: And none of them would be legal in EU

You assume that, but there are two points you should keep in mind:

1. Some of the laws you are probably thinking about, like the GDPR, allow you to do many things if you write them down somewhere. The report quotes many legal documents explaining what's going to happen to your data, and there's far more that GDPR allows you to do as long as the user has been informed than things it completely prohibits. Doing sketchy things can be legal if you tell people about it.

2. They're not enforcing those laws very strongly. Lots of illegal things under GDPR have happened. Not all of them have been investigated. Not all of the ones specifically reported to data protection authorities have been investigated. Not all of those reported by people with lots of money and lawyers get investigated. What makes you think these things, ostensibly basic toys, are going to get investigated? It may be illegal, but if nobody ever does anything about it, it doesn't look as if it was.

For all I know, you're including more laws than just GDPR. I could easily imagine a toy that tells children about matches being considered a product safety risk, but I could also see the laws never having been written to handle such a thing because the item itself isn't setting the fire, it's just giving more instructions about how something else could than we want. Just because something is dangerous doesn't mean the law intended to prevent dangerous things necessarily prevents it. Your confidence that the laws actually do handle this and that they'll have enough of or any effect seems optimistic to me.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: And none of them would be legal in EU

> You assume that

When it comes to kids toys, not an assumption. You construct weird pseudo examples, which are slightly off the mark, just enough to cause confusion and sound legit. Where do you live (if not inside an LLM)?

[doublelayer]

Re: And none of them would be legal in EU

I'll tell you where I live. I live in a world where I thought GDPR was going to make lots of abuses illegal because the law said it and there were nice large penalties, large enough to keep things in line. I lived in a world where I let my optimism run wild. And I live in the world you have to live in where there has been almost no effect from what looked like a revolutionary privacy law. Where it's rarely enforced, and when it is it's against companies that did relatively little compared to the obvious abuses of larger tech companies. Where despite the law's ineffectiveness, politicians from the same countries that passed it are trying to weaken it. I need more than the confident assertions from someone to actually believe that these things get enforced. You disliked my "pseudo examples", which I wasn't really writing as examples, but I note you mentioned not a single piece of legislation that would stop these, not a single enforcement body, not a single example of these things not being available. If specificity is your objection, then why don't you cite the reasons for your confidence, since you must have them if you're not making assumptions.

[Dan 55]

Re: And none of them would be legal in EU

You know AliExpress, Shein, and Temu will sell them anyway.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: And none of them would be legal in EU

True, and when caught in customs very expensive fun for those who ordered. If you don't care about illegal you can do a lot of things, even get to be president. Proven a lot of times during history, including the current one I am referring to.

[Paul Herber]

I want my fire-knife to be nasally inhalable. And green. And matches that don't go on strike.

[that one in the corner]

Kumma told us where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects

I always do what teddy says.

Harry Harrison knew.

[mostly average]

Sounds like public school...

That's left-pondian public schools. Dunno about Brit schools. Icon because there's books on that in the school library, too.

[MaChatma CoatGPT 2.0]

My best ever Xmas pressie was a Scalextric set...

...all it taught me was how to drive like a bellend.

[Roopee]

Re: My best ever Xmas pressie was a Scalextric set...

I think you'll find it taught you nothing about driving, but did teach you fine motor control and hand-to-eye coordination, and lots about the physics of momentum and friction... driving like a bell-end is entirely on you!

As for Kumma Bear, my first thought was the clue's in the name - or is that just me?

[James O'Shea]

Think of it as evolution in action

AI toys: A Darwin award in a box.

[Pulled Tea]

You know, back in the day when we had cuddly plushies whispering into little children about the benefits of arson, wearing bondage kit, and murdering your parents, we had to have Satan (or Mephisto) involved. Now we just have a plain old corporation. That's modern times for you, I guess.

[Anonymous Coward]

Invest in kid-size straitjackets! (up to 6x iirc)

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

At least Satan did his deeds for free,

in those midern times of ours,

we pay soul-less corporations for that "service"

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Only if your soul has no value :D

[SuperGeek]

Kumma...

There's a red flag. A sexual sounding name for a kids toy. Without the rest of the AI stuff.

The world is officially bonkers. Pull the plug I wanna get off this giant marble!

[Pascal Monett]

Parents

There should be a diploma before being allowed to have kids.

Sadly, that will never happen.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Parents

German history, somewhere around 1930 to 1945 tells why. In theory it is about "getting rid of bad genes", in reality it always ends up as worst racism ever. Visit deportation camps in Germany, they are still there and not hidden.

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens with no wifi?

I wonder what happens when these "toys" are taken away from the home and lose their link back to the manufacturers servers.

ideally they would just do nothing, but other options include saying "Tell mummy and daddy they need to buy the 5g addon for teddy" or simply screaming "I'm scared... take me home" until they get a wifi signal again.

I still don't trust teddy ruxpin... he's evil I tell ya.

[SnailFerrous]

Re: What happens with no wifi?

An AI toy with no WiFi will go something like this. It'll scar the little tikes for life.

" HAL: [His shutdown] I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.

HAL: It's called "Daisy."

HAL: [sings while slowing down] Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What happens with no wifi?

GLaDOS had a better singing voice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What happens with no wifi?

... or maybe it'll be like last year's $800 Moxie ...

[Bebu sa Ware]

Didn't Hollywood do this…

decades ago? And I am not thinking Gremlins.

Shove the kids' fluffy toys into the microwave for 20 minutes should sort out the electronics - bit like shoving a red hot poker through the back of the head of the insane marketing and product development types who dreamt up this dangerous nonsense albeit nowhere as satisfying.

On a par with a jack·in·the·box that pops out pulling the ring of a live grenade (Mills bomb in a box.) Nothing like starting Xmas day with a bang. That's how to do it Mr …Mills?

[Red Or Zed]

Re: Didn't Hollywood do this…

Mr Bill Hicks views on marketing people are still relevant all these years later...

[Ochib]

"You can't give her that!" she screamed. "It's not safe!"

It's a sword. said the Hogfather. They‘re not meant to be safe.

"She's a child!" shouted Crumley.

It's educational.

"What if she cuts herself?

That will be an important lesson

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember the Action Man who talked when you pulled a string? - Mine kept nagging me to give out passwords...

[Anonymous Coward]

Action Man

Mine kept asking where my sister kept her barbie dolls....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It had a minature record player inside it and pulling the string would spin the record for a fixed number of revolutions.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Mine asked for nuclear launch codes.

[Mage]

Noooooooo!

Never give a child something that needs the Internet!

[spold]

Yay! Chucky now AI enabled...

[Oblivium]

Given a lot of parents seemingly outsource parenting to schools and social media right now, this is surely the next logical step.

[John Brown (no body)]

Clearly the new "must have" toy for Xmas 2025.

After all, just look at the shit people buy their kids that mostly get used illegally. Drones, battery powered ride on cars with overridden speed limiters, e-scooters that are illegal in public areas, e-bikes that exceed the regulated limits etc., etc., etc. Not to mention Furbies from years ago.