The New Wild West of AI Kids’ Toys

The main antagonist of Toy Story 5hitting theaters this summer is a green, frog-shaped children’s tablet named Lilypad, an awesome new villain for the beloved Pixar franchise. But if Pixar had been listening, it could have used an AI children’s toy instead.

AI toys are seemingly everywhere, marketed online as friendly companions for children as young as three, and they are still a largely unregulated category. It’s easier than ever to create an AI companion, thanks to template development programs and flavor coding. By 2026, they’ve become a hot trend in inexpensive trinkets, lining the halls of trade shows like CES, MWC, and Hong Kong’s Toys & Games Fair. As of October 2025, more than 1,500 AI toy companies were registered in China, and Huawei’s Smart HanHan plush toy sold 10,000 units in China in its first week. Sharp put its talking AI toy PokeTomo on sale in Japan in April.

But if you search for AI toys on Amazon, you’ll mostly find specialty players like FoloToy, Alilo, Miriat, and Miko, the last of which claims to have sold over 700,000 units.

Courtesy of Miko

Consumer groups say AI toys, in the form of teddy bears, bunnies, sunflowers, creatures and child-friendly “robots,” need more guardrails and stricter regulations. FoloToy’s Kumma Bear, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o when tested by the Public Interest Research Group’s New Economy team, gave instructions on how to light a match and find a knife, and discussed sex and drugs. Alilo’s Smart AI Bunny talked about leather whips and “impact play,” and in testing by NBC News, Miriat’s Miiloo toy spouted arguments from the Chinese Communist Party.

Age-inappropriate content is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI toys. We’re starting to see real research on the potential social impacts on children. There’s a problem when the technology doesn’t work, like guardrails allowing her to talk about BDSM, but RJ Cross, director of the Our Online Life program at consumer advocacy group PIRG, says it’s fixable. “Then there are the problems when the technology becomes too good, like, ‘I’m going to be your best friend,’” she says. Like Gabbo, from AI toy maker Curio. There are real social development issues to consider with these types of toys, even though these toy manufacturers promote their products as premium, “screen-free play.”

How real children play

Published in March, a new study from the University of Cambridge was the first to place a commercially available AI toy in front of a group of children and their parents and monitor their play. In spring 2025, Jenny Gibson, professor of neurodiversity and developmental psychology, and Emily Goodacre, research associate, created the Curio Gabbo with 14 child participants, a mix of girls and boys, ages 3 to 5.

Gabbo didn’t talk about drugs or say “I love you.” But the researchers identified a range of concerns related to developmental psychology and made recommendations for parents, policymakers, toy manufacturers and early childhood practitioners.

First, the conversational turn of phrase. Goodacre says that up to age 5, children develop spoken language and relationship skills, and even babies interact by taking turns in conversation. Gabbo’s turn-taking is “neither human” nor “intuitive,” she says. Some children in the study were not bothered by this and continued to play. Others experienced interruptions because the toy’s microphone wasn’t actively listening while it spoke, disrupting the back-and-forth flow of a counting game, for example.