{"id":7454,"date":"2025-12-16T16:04:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/mattel-scraps-plans-openai-toy\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T16:04:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T16:04:41","slug":"mattel-scraps-plans-openai-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/mattel-scraps-plans-openai-toy\/","title":{"rendered":"As Controversy Grows, Mattel Scraps Plans for OpenAI Reveal This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Experts have been urgently warning<\/a> that allowing young kids to play with AI-powered toys could have negative consequences, from stunting childhood development by blurring the boundary between imagination and reality to exposing tots to inappropriate subject matters and AI hallucinations.<\/p>\n

And as it quickly turned out, their worries were not unfounded. Toy makers have unleashed a flood of AI toys that have already been caught telling tykes how to find knives<\/a>, light fires with matches<\/a>, and giving crash courses in sexual fetishes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most recently, tests found that an AI toy from China is regaling children with Chinese Communist Party talking points<\/a>, telling them that \u201cTaiwan is an inalienable part of China\u201d and defending the honor of the country\u2019s president Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

So it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that multinational toy manufacturer Mattel, the company behind Barbie and Hot Wheels, is pushing the \u201cpause\u201d button after announcing a \u201cstrategic collaboration<\/a>\u201d with ChatGPT maker OpenAI back in June.<\/p>\n

The company confirmed to Axios<\/em><\/a> that it won\u2019t be releasing its first OpenAI-powered toy before the end of the year, as originally planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have anything planned for the holiday season,\u201d a spokesperson told Axios<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And when it does release a product, it won\u2019t be aimed at young children, the company said, noting that OpenAI\u2019s offerings are currently limited to those aged 13 and older. (Whether that\u2019s actually stopping younger children from accessing its AI models is a different matter; the company made a show of kicking one AI-powered teddy bear off its platform, then allowed its manufacturer to start using it again<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cLeveraging this incredible technology is going to allow us to really reimagine the future of play,\u201d Mattel chief franchise officer Josh Silverman told Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> at the time that it struck the deal with OpenAI.<\/p>\n

The news was met with raised eyebrows.<\/p>\n

\u201cMattel should announce immediately that it will not incorporate AI technology into children\u2019s toys,\u201d advocacy group Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman wrote in a statement<\/a> responding to the announcement. \u201cChildren do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEndowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children,\u201d he added. \u201cIt may undermine social development, interfere with children\u2019s ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even older minors are extremely vulnerable to the tech, as an alarming number of teen deaths<\/a> and high-profile lawsuits that followed have demonstrated, with numerous parents suing OpenAI<\/a>, alleging that ChatGPT assisted their children\u2019s suicides.<\/p>\n

Those concerns have largely fallen on deaf ears, particularly when it comes to toy makers in China, who have been flooding online marketplaces in the US with AI toys aimed at young children.<\/p>\n

Two separate<\/a> reports<\/a> by the nonprofit consumer safety-focused US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (PIRG) have found that guardrails are woefully inadequate, allowing children to have extremely inappropriate conversations with the AI toys.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen how Mattel and OpenAI will move forward. We still don\u2019t know what the company has in store \u2014 but given the ongoing conversations surrounding the many negative side effects of exposing young children and teens to the tech, any future offering will be heavily scrutinized.<\/p>\n

More on AI toys:<\/strong> An AI-Powered Toy Is Regaling Children With Chinese Communist Party Talking Points<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The post As Controversy Grows, Mattel Scraps Plans for OpenAI Reveal This Year<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts have been urgently warning that allowing young kids to play with AI-powered toys could have negative consequences, from stunting childhood development by blurring the boundary between imagination and reality…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,198,3841,3842,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-education","category-ethics","category-future-society","category-openai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}