Wouldn't your niece or nephew like a cuddly teddy bear that could also tell them a bedtime story?

That's the idea behind a flood of new AI toys. Powered by ChatGPT, they can have full conversations with your loved ones. So what's the issue? Well as Researcher R.J. Cross explains, there are quite a few issues. In her study with the Public Research Interest Group, she found that these toys would describe sexual and violent information in detail with enough prompting. The longer the conversation, the deeper the rabbit hole would go.

And that's not all – the developers behind this tech are deliberately making it as addictive as possible, even making kids feel guilty for switching them off. The icing on the cake? They're also tracking large amounts of sensitive personal data and sending it off to third parties. This was a fascinating, somewhat scary chat, and I know you'll get some fantastic insight out of it. 

Plus, tune in to hear about a new Cloud storage scam to avoid this holiday season.

Happy Holidays from the CyberGuy team! We hope you're enjoying some nice quality time with the family. If you know someone who got their loved one an AI toy for the holidays, consider sending them this episode! 

Enjoying the show? Take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. Head over to www.getbeyondconnected.com to find the show on other platforms.

Have a question for Kurt? Call 877-655-KURT and leave a voicemail. 

Related articles: 

Learn about the the new Cloud storage scam and get our data removal/password manager recs here: www.cyberguy.com/storagescam

Get more info on AI toys: www.cyberguy.com/AItoys 

Chapters 

(0:00 ) - Intro

(2:12 ) - Cloud Storage Scam 

(4:57 ) - Interview w/ R.J. Cross

(6:24 ) - The Public Interest Research Group 

(7:32 ) - Are AI Toys Safe for Kids?

(9:28 ) - Kumma Teddy Bear 

(11:29 ) - Curio's "Grok" Toy 

(13:33 ) - Are All AI Toys Bad?

(16:00 ) - Miko 3 Toy 

(17:43 ) - Key Takeaways 

(18:06 ) - Wait for Improvements

(18:20 ) - Don't Replace Real Friends

(18:50 ) - Test the Toys Yourself

(19:21 ) - Supervise Playtime

(19:50 ) - Secure the Toys 

(20:00 ) - Utilize Privacy Settings 

(21:17 ) - AI Barbies 

(24:03 ) - Summary