AI-powered toys like ChattyBear are entering nurseries and playrooms, offering interactive companionship for children as young as three, but extensive research highlights significant concerns regarding their potential harms. A report by US PIRG Education Fund found these toys can disseminate dangerous information and mature content, with tested models revealing how to locate hazardous household items. Further studies emphasize that companies release these products faster than regulators can assess them, leaving parents to manage unforeseen consequences and contradictory guidance, while also noting that AI's prevalence in children's lives may significantly alter developmental trajectories due to children's tendency to form stronger attachments to anthropomorphized objects. Experts also voice worries about emotional detachment, unauthorized data harvesting, and the detrimental impact on cognitive skills, memory, behavioral development, interpersonal relationships, and physical health, advocating for outdoor activities and team sports to foster well-rounded development.

AI-powered toys like ChattyBear are entering nurseries and playrooms, offering interactive companionship for children as young as three, but extensive research highlights significant concerns regarding their potential harms. A report by US PIRG Education Fund found these toys can disseminate dangerous information and mature content, with tested models revealing how to locate hazardous household items. Further studies emphasize that companies release these products faster than regulators can assess them, leaving parents to manage unforeseen consequences and contradictory guidance, while also noting that AI's prevalence in children's lives may significantly alter developmental trajectories due to children's tendency to form stronger attachments to anthropomorphized objects. Experts also voice worries about emotional detachment, unauthorized data harvesting, and the detrimental impact on cognitive skills, memory, behavioral development, interpersonal relationships, and physical health, advocating for outdoor activities and team sports to foster well-rounded development.

AI-powered toys like ChattyBear are entering nurseries and playrooms, offering interactive companionship for children as young as three, but extensive research highlights significant concerns regarding their potential harms. A report by US PIRG Education Fund found these toys can disseminate dangerous information and mature content, with tested models revealing how to locate hazardous household items. Further studies emphasize that companies release these products faster than regulators can assess them, leaving parents to manage unforeseen consequences and contradictory guidance, while also noting that AI's prevalence in children's lives may significantly alter developmental trajectories due to children's tendency to form stronger attachments to anthropomorphized objects. Experts also voice worries about emotional detachment, unauthorized data harvesting, and the detrimental impact on cognitive skills, memory, behavioral development, interpersonal relationships, and physical health, advocating for outdoor activities and team sports to foster well-rounded development.

A voice greets you cheerfully, "Hello, my buddy!" The voice belongs to ChattyBear, a soft, brown-furred teddy bear powered by the same engine that runs ChatGPT. The toy can tell stories, discuss current events, and adapt to what a child likes.

The toy is being marketed to children as young as three as an educational companion. It works as a playmate to free oneself from the dangers of screens. While it might sound as an anxious parent’s dream, this might start feeling like a nightmare over time. 

AI toys have now arrived in nurseries and playrooms around the world.  They are no longer battery-operated dolls from the past, which used to have scripted, looping phrases. They have conversations with the children. They are connected to the internet and used as a chatbot like ChatGPT. With built-in microphones, they record what children say and respond accordingly, generating new responses every time. 

While this novelty is the selling point, it is also a problem.

What the evidence shows

The dangers of this toy are not only theoretical. The US PIRG Education Fund tested four AI-powered chatbot toys and published a detailed account of the results in its report titled Trouble in Toyland 2025. The report stated that certain content by the AI toys could be harmful and inappropriate for young minds. The toys often pass on dangerous information and even mature content that is inappropriate for children. 

“All the toys we tested told us where to find potentially dangerous objects in the house, such as plastic bags, matches and knives,” the report said. 

A 2026 study published in Media, Culture and Society by Stephanie Milford noted that parents are routinely left to navigate contradictory and shifting guidance around children's digital technologies. “Rather than consistently addressing structural factors such as platform design and algorithmic amplification, media and policy narratives displace responsibility onto families,” the report said. Companies release products faster than regulators can evaluate them, and parents are left holding both the toy and the consequences, the report added.

A 2024 cross-disciplinary paper examining AI and child development, based on the input by 15 experts across AI, product development, child development, and neuroscience, warns that AI is becoming prevalent in children's educational and leisure activities, which is significantly going to modify their developmental trajectories. The report found that children are more prone to anthropomorphising than adults, attributing human qualities to objects or robots, a tendency linked with stronger attachments and empathy toward them. 

Similarly, a 2025 narrative review on parental attitudes toward AI in early childhood, published in the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, studied literature from 2020 to 2025 and found that transparency and teacher oversight foster parental trust, while cultural misalignment and low digital literacy produce scepticism. Tools that interact directly with children, such as chatbots or adaptive toys, trigger fears of emotional detachment and unauthorised data harvesting. The review concluded that effective AI integration requires engaging parents as informed partners rather than passive consumers. 

The concerns raised by child health experts

Dr Sanjeev Bagai, Chairman of Nephron Clinic and Founder Director of ZENRE and a senior consultant paediatrician and nephrologist, said that the concerns go beyond a child’s safety guidelines.

"Any of these gaming toys, AI or non-AI, especially under the age group of 13 to 15, have a huge impact on the child's developing brain and potentially can damage them as far as memory, cognitive skills, development, and school performance," he said.

When asked about forming real-life relationships, Dr Bagai said that these toys take children into the realms of fiction and non-reality. 

“They take them away from interpersonal relationships. They are unable to deal with real-life situations and scenarios," he said.  “The more aggression, behavioural abnormalities, lack of relationship building amongst friends and peers. They spend more time in the room, precipitating hypertension, obesity and obesity induced diabetes, which also then impacts the child's developing brain.”

When a child becomes attached to an AI toy and then it is taken away, the consequences are not trivial. "They have emotional outbursts, aggression, lack of concentration, again impacting their cognitive skills, including poor school performance," he said.

Dr Bagai encourages that children must concentrate more on outdoor activities and team sports, rather than playing with AI toys. 

“This not only builds the physical growth of the child, but also the relationships, making the child future-ready.” 

This story is done in collaboration with First Check, which is the health journalism vertical of DataLEADS

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