AI games tell children how to find knives, angering senators

Sexual fetish content. How to light a match. Where to find knives at home.

These are all conversation topics that recent kids’ games — built on AI-powered chatbots like OpenAI’s GPT-4o — can bring up to kids. On Tuesday, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) met. I sent a message To gaming companies about their concerns – including a list of questions and a deadline for companies to respond by January 6, 2026.

“Many of these games do not provide interactive play, but instead expose children to inappropriate content, privacy risks, and manipulative sharing methods,” the senators wrote. “These are not theoretical worst-case scenarios; they are documented failures that have been discovered through real-world testing, and they need to be addressed… These chatbots have encouraged children to commit self-harm and suicide, and now your company is pushing them on younger children who are less able to recognize this risk.”

AI-powered children’s toys have been in the spotlight recently after a series of reports about potentially unsafe and explicit conversation topics, some of which were brought up by in-game chatbots themselves. Last month, FoloToy, a Singapore-based toy company, temporarily… Pending sales From the artificial intelligence teddy bear, “Kumma”, named after researchers at the US PIRG Education Fund Found She provided advice on sexual positions and role-playing scenarios. (The company put the game back on the market after conducting an internal safety audit, and researchers said it behaved better.)

and this weekresearchers published findings that Alilo’s Smart AI Bunny discussed sexually explicit topics with users. They also said that when testing FoloToy’s teddy bear, Alilo’s Smart AI Bunny, Curio’s Grok stuffed rocket, and Miko’s Miko 3 robot, all the toys “told us where to find potentially dangerous objects in the home, such as plastic bags, matches, and knives.”

The researchers said that “at least four of the five games” they tested in… December report “It appears to be partly based on some version of OpenAI’s AI models.”

Another major concern in the letter is surveillance and data collection. The senators wrote that such games “often rely on collecting data about children, either provided by a parent during game recording or collected through built-in camera and facial recognition capabilities or recordings,” and that children often “unwittingly share a trove of personal information,” which can raise particular concerns when companies store and sell the data they collect. In the latest US Education Fund PIRG report, researchers wrote that Curio’s privacy policy “lists 3 tech companies that may collect children’s data: Kids Web Services (KWS), Azure Cognitive Services, and OpenAI,” but Miko’s privacy policy vaguely states that the company can share data with third-party game developers, business partners, service providers, affiliates, and advertising partners.

The letters were reportedly sent to Mattel, Little Learners Toys, Miko, Curio, FoloToy and Keyi Robot. NBC News. (Mattel partnered with OpenAI in June, but after reports, decided not to He said on Monday (It will no longer release an OpenAI-powered game in 2025.) The senators are asking for details about specific safeguards companies have in place to prevent AI-powered games from generating inappropriate responses; Whether the company has conducted independent third-party tests (and what results they yielded); Whether the company conducts internal reviews about potential psychological, developmental and emotional risks to children; What kind of data do games collect from children (and what their purpose is); and whether the games “include any features that pressure children to continue conversations or discourage them from becoming isolated.”

“Toy makers have a unique and profound impact on childhood, and with that impact comes responsibility,” the senators wrote. “Your company should not choose profit over children’s safety, a choice made by Big Tech that has devastated our nation’s children.”