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New research from Public Interest Research Group and tests conducted by NBC News found that a wide range of AI toys have loose guardrails.
A wave of AI-powered children’s toys has hit shelves this holiday season, claiming to rely on sophisticated chatbots to animate interactive robots and stuffed animals that can converse with kids.
Children have been conversing with stuffies and figurines that seemingly chat with them for years, like Furbies and Build-A-Bears. But connecting the toys to advanced artificial intelligence opens up new and unexpected possible interactions between kids and technology.
In new research, experts warn that the AI technology powering these new toys is so novel and poorly tested that nobody knows how they may affect young children.



I cannot speak to whether or not Chinese people are racist for choosing a yellow cartoon character with which to describe their president. As far as I know, they don’t do this. I’ve only ever heard this from Western media. If Western media is going to be racist, they can do a lot better than comparing someone to a female bear imprisoned in the London Zoo. I don’t associate female bears with Chinese men, and I don’t think Xi (pronouns: he/him) looks like Winnie the Poo, but hey, maybe some people think that’s what he looks like. I sort of thought it was supposed to be a fat joke? Now that you mention it, this does sound like something boomers would come up with… it’s not exactly a modern cartoon.
When I said that pornography was banned in China, I was speaking from a place of experience with Chinese corporate censorship. It is true that one can get away with breaking the law in China, simply due to the difficulty of policing such a large population. China has many laws, but some are only enforced in order to tack on more jail time for someone caught for a more serious crime. But, they can sentence pimps and porn producers to death, and they have before… so I guess how one interprets this type of censorship depends on how they feel about that.