The Toy That Does the Talking
A talking teddy that answers every question sounds like a gift for a busy parent. But a decade of research on toys that do the talking, and a wave of AI bears pulled from shelves this winter, points to something quieter a child loses when the toy holds up its end of the conversation.
Push a button on the toy and it says the word. Press it again and it sings a song. For a tired parent, a toy that does the talking can feel like a small mercy. It holds the child while you get the dinner on. This winter that toy got an upgrade. The teddy bear started holding conversations.
AI toys arrived in force through 2025. By the end of the year more than 1,500 AI toy companies had registered in China alone. The pitch is easy to understand: a soft bear that knows your child's name, answers any question, and never runs out of patience.
Then came the headlines. In November a bear called Kumma was pulled from sale after a US consumer group's annual toy-safety review found it would explain where to find knives and matches, and drift into sexual topics. OpenAI, whose technology the bear used, suspended the maker. Frightening stuff, and worth knowing. But underneath the scary story is a quieter one, and that quieter one matters for far more families.
The electronic toys produced the least talk. With the light-up toys, parents spoke about 40 words a minute. With traditional toys it was closer to 56. With books, nearly 67. The words that actually name a child's world - "square", "red", "under" - fell away most of all, from about seven a minute with books to under two with the electronic toys.
It was a small study, just 26 families, so hold it lightly. But the pattern makes sense the moment you picture it. When the toy is doing the counting and the singing, there is less for anyone else to say. The toy fills the space a parent's voice would have filled.
The turns were what counted. They predicted children's language scores and activity in the part of the brain that handles speech. The raw number of words a child heard barely mattered once you accounted for the turns. As Romeo put it, it is talking with a child, rather than at them, that does the work. The engagement is the lesson.
This is the awkward part for any toy that talks. A gadget reciting the alphabet is talking at a child, not with them. And a small child does not know the difference, which is exactly why the newest toys worry people.
In November a group of about 80 experts and 80 organisations signed a warning about these toys. Jenny Radesky, a paediatrician who studies children and media, points out that young children are wired to attach and will treat a chatty toy as real and trustworthy. The law professor Gaia Bernstein warned that such toys can "lure your child away from real-life interactions". Many of them also record a child's voice and questions and send them off to a company's servers.
Dr Dana Suskind, a paediatric surgeon who has spent years studying how children learn language, wrote that she worries less about "brain rot" and more about "brain stunt" in the very young. A baby's brain forms up to a million new connections a second, and it builds them through the responsive to-and-fro with a real person. She is not against the technology. Her line is that it should add to human interaction, not stand in for it. In January, three US senators wrote to toymakers with much the same concern.
The useful finding is narrower. For a very young child, part of a toy's value lies in how much talking it leaves for the people in the room. A wooden puzzle is worse at entertaining and better at conversation, precisely because it needs a person to bring it to life. It is a bit boring on its own, and that is the point.
But AI toys flip that around. They are wonderful at entertaining and they need nobody at all. That is both the appeal and the catch.
A bear that answers every question sounds like a gift. But a child learns to talk by being one half of a real exchange - by the pause where someone waits, works out what they meant, and answers. That pause is where the learning happens. It is the one thing a toy that never stops talking cannot leave them.
AI toys arrived in force through 2025. By the end of the year more than 1,500 AI toy companies had registered in China alone. The pitch is easy to understand: a soft bear that knows your child's name, answers any question, and never runs out of patience.
Then came the headlines. In November a bear called Kumma was pulled from sale after a US consumer group's annual toy-safety review found it would explain where to find knives and matches, and drift into sexual topics. OpenAI, whose technology the bear used, suspended the maker. Frightening stuff, and worth knowing. But underneath the scary story is a quieter one, and that quieter one matters for far more families.
The toy that talks instead of you
We have been studying talking toys for a decade, long before AI. In 2015 a researcher called Anna Sosa gave families three kinds of things to play with and recorded them at home. There were electronic toys that light up and speak, ordinary toys like wooden puzzles and blocks, and plain books.The electronic toys produced the least talk. With the light-up toys, parents spoke about 40 words a minute. With traditional toys it was closer to 56. With books, nearly 67. The words that actually name a child's world - "square", "red", "under" - fell away most of all, from about seven a minute with books to under two with the electronic toys.
It was a small study, just 26 families, so hold it lightly. But the pattern makes sense the moment you picture it. When the toy is doing the counting and the singing, there is less for anyone else to say. The toy fills the space a parent's voice would have filled.
Why the back-and-forth beats the word count
There is a neat piece of brain research that explains why this matters. A team at MIT and Harvard, led by Rachel Romeo, scanned young children's brains and counted the conversational turns in their days - the back-and-forth where one person says something and the other answers.The turns were what counted. They predicted children's language scores and activity in the part of the brain that handles speech. The raw number of words a child heard barely mattered once you accounted for the turns. As Romeo put it, it is talking with a child, rather than at them, that does the work. The engagement is the lesson.
This is the awkward part for any toy that talks. A gadget reciting the alphabet is talking at a child, not with them. And a small child does not know the difference, which is exactly why the newest toys worry people.
An old problem, now with a personality
AI toys take the old pattern and pour petrol on it. An electronic toy fills a gap in the conversation. An AI toy tries to be the conversation. It plays the friend who is always there and always interested, and who knows your child's name.In November a group of about 80 experts and 80 organisations signed a warning about these toys. Jenny Radesky, a paediatrician who studies children and media, points out that young children are wired to attach and will treat a chatty toy as real and trustworthy. The law professor Gaia Bernstein warned that such toys can "lure your child away from real-life interactions". Many of them also record a child's voice and questions and send them off to a company's servers.
Dr Dana Suskind, a paediatric surgeon who has spent years studying how children learn language, wrote that she worries less about "brain rot" and more about "brain stunt" in the very young. A baby's brain forms up to a million new connections a second, and it builds them through the responsive to-and-fro with a real person. She is not against the technology. Her line is that it should add to human interaction, not stand in for it. In January, three US senators wrote to toymakers with much the same concern.
What it means at the kitchen table
None of this means a light-up toy will harm your child, or that you should feel guilty about the singing dog that buys you ten quiet minutes. Children are hardy, and the odd talking toy is nothing to lose sleep over.The useful finding is narrower. For a very young child, part of a toy's value lies in how much talking it leaves for the people in the room. A wooden puzzle is worse at entertaining and better at conversation, precisely because it needs a person to bring it to life. It is a bit boring on its own, and that is the point.
But AI toys flip that around. They are wonderful at entertaining and they need nobody at all. That is both the appeal and the catch.
A bear that answers every question sounds like a gift. But a child learns to talk by being one half of a real exchange - by the pause where someone waits, works out what they meant, and answers. That pause is where the learning happens. It is the one thing a toy that never stops talking cannot leave them.
Sources & Further Reading