A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Children's toys that talk using AI chatbots are expected to be in high demand this holiday season. But a new report by a consumer advocacy group is raising concerns after they found that some toys shared instructions on how to light a match or find a knife, or offered sexually explicit content. Some of those toys have since been pulled off the shelves. Here to talk more about this is Teresa Murray. She is a co-author of the report and director of the consumer watchdog program with the Public Interest Research Group.
Teresa, so you found that one AI-enabled teddy bear was sharing inappropriate content and advice with children. What else are kids hearing by way of these toys?
TERESA MURRAY: Well, good morning. Thanks for having us. Yeah. The toys will talk about a lot of topics that some parents might find concerning. It could be how to find dangerous objects in the home, such as matches and knives, and how to light those matches. It could be about religion and whether God is real and what happened to Grandma, who died. And it could be very sexually explicit topics that some parents may not be comfortable with their kids hearing about.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, this is like life imitating art. It sounds like that movie "M3GAN" that came out a few years ago, and the sequel that came out this year, about that AI doll that becomes overprotective. So apart from what the toys say, I mean, this report says that they're also listening and collecting data. What kind of data are they collecting?
MURRAY: Well, anything that is available. So all of them are collecting your child's voices, potentially. They're collecting their names, their dates of birth. The one toy that we looked at has facial recognition software, so there's that. You know, all kinds of information - the kid's likes, dislikes, favorite toys, favorite friends. And if you want to string out your "M3GAN" example, I mean, because they're connected to the internet, so anything is available, who knows what those toys might start talking to your children about with their friends or their friends' parents or your neighborhood? I mean, it's terrifying.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, how different, though, is this from, you know, our phones or other devices that we use to turn on the lights? I mean, we always think that these things are listening to us anyway.
MURRAY: Well, that's true, although most 3-year-olds don't have a phone that's connected to the internet. And young kids who do have phones, their parents are normally able to enable parental controls or prohibit certain kinds of content. You know, we have screen time. We have limits on TV programs that our kids can watch and on video games. And when you hand an AI toy to a child of any age, you just don't know what it's going to have accessible, so it is quite different. And the toys that we had in the past - we've had talking toys for decades.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
MURRAY: But they were preprogrammed answers. Like, I knew the Farmer Says See 'n Say. These are...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
MURRAY: ...Connected to the internet. We actually don't necessarily think of these as just toys, but they're - anything that's on the internet is potentially available to them.
MARTÍNEZ: Quickly, Teresa, if a kid wants this for the holidays, what's a parent to do? Just say no?
MURRAY: Well, I mean, we do believe that this is a decision that every family needs to make for themselves, but there are a few things that people should know. If you're going to buy one of these or get it as a gift, you should actually test the toy...
MARTÍNEZ: OK.
MURRAY: ...You know, for like an hour, because sometimes the guardrails break down after a few minutes. And so really have a conversation that you think your kid might have. Also, know that the toy has potential to gather private information, like we talked about - name, voice, facial recognition. It's just limitless.
MARTÍNEZ: Teresa Murray is with the Public Interest Research Group. Teresa, thank you.
MURRAY: Thank you.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR did reach out to the makers of Kumma, the AI teddy bear, for comment, but we did not hear back before airtime.
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