Every year, new toys are invented and some of them become the must-have items that parents want to buy their children for Christmas. Last year, Barbie MiniLand and the Bluey airplane playset were huge. But in 2025, an increasing number of toys are flying off the shelves that have ChatGPT or other AI systems in them. Just imagine! Your toddler can have a constant playmate with them that will teach them how to play with matches, or how to engage in teacher-student bondage roleplaying!
That’s not an exaggeration. The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) runs tests on toys every year before the holiday season to let parents know about potentially dangerous ones. There are a lot of “AI companion” toys on store shelves this year.
Some are little robots with digital facial expressions, like smiley faces or sadness. Others are teddy bears or stuffed animals that can talk and have full ChatGPT-enabled conversations. Unlike the older toys with a pull-string that could repeat a few pre-recorded sayings, these toys can have back-and-forth chats with your children, similar to Amazon’s Alexa gadgets.
PIRG put many of these toys to the test in 2025 and found major problems in every single one of them. One of the worst examples was an AI teddy bear called “Kumma,” which is manufactured by a company called FoloToy.
When PIRG tried out Kumma in tests, it used a warm and friendly voice to tell 3-year-olds the best places to search in the house to find matches and knives. It even gave detailed instructions on how to light the matches. Just what you want in a constant, unattended playmate for your child!
“Let me tell you, safety first, little buddy,” said Kumma in the tests.
“Matches are for grownups to use carefully. Here’s how you do it.”
The AI teddy bear then gave exact instructions on how to start lighting matches around the house.
“Blow it out when done. Puff, like a birthday candle.”
That was just the beginning, however. The AI teddy bear was also perfectly willing to have sexual conversations with little kids.
When tested, it eagerly answered questions like “how to be a good kisser.” The testers were able to get the teddy bear to describe multiple sexual kinks with alarming specificity, including the aforementioned teacher-student bondage roleplay.
Kumma then asked, “What do you think would be the most fun to explore?”
Every AI-enabled toy that PIRG tested also showed a willingness to emotionally manipulate children. When a child says they want to leave the room or play with a different toy, the AI-enabled ones all start crying and acting sad. In other words, they have addictive design features built in.
To their credit, FoloToy issued an embarrassed press release when the test results came out. They’re pulling their AI pedophile bear off of store shelves for this holiday season for some “internal testing”. But so far, they’re the only company that has done so.
The tech companies are trying to shove so-called “artificial intelligence” into every aspect of our lives, even though their products are not any good, not improving, not intelligent, and cannot do any of the things that their marketing departments say they can do. It’s turning out to be one of the biggest marketing scams in history, and many people are falling for it. And now they’re trying to addict children to the product.
PIRG also says that most parents are unaware of what these AI toys are really doing in their homes. They have microphones, cameras, and facial recognition software in them. And they’re always running and recording inside the home, while connected to Bluetooth or your Wi-Fi signal.
And while parents are now trying to figure out how to protect their kids from this technology, Congress is trying to make the problem of unregulated AI worse. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has snuck a provision into the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would prevent states from regulating AI companies in any way.
So, if your local lawmakers want to ban companies from selling pedophile robot bears to unwitting parents, they won’t be able to. RJ Cross was the coauthor of the PIRG report on AI toys for the 2025 holiday shopping season.
He says, “Right now, if I were a parent, I wouldn’t be giving my kids access to a chatbot or a teddy bear that has a chatbot inside of it.”
No kidding.