{"id":314285,"date":"2025-08-25T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=314285"},"modified":"2025-08-27T07:50:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T07:50:44","slug":"theyre-coming-for-your-kids-and-grandkids-openai-signs-deal-with-leading-toymaker-mattel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=314285","title":{"rendered":"They’re coming for your kids and grandkids: OpenAI signs deal with leading toymaker Mattel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo Hohmann \u2013 Leo\u2019s Newsletter Aug 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

If you thought AI poses a threat to people\u2019s jobs, professional statuses and social lives, you\u2019d be right. But it\u2019s not just adults being affected.<\/p>\n

Kids are in the crosshairs of the technocrats\u2019 latest mind-manipulating tool. And what better way to do that than to incorporate AI into kids\u2019 toys? Well, it\u2019s already being done.<\/p>\n

Children\u2019s toy company Mattel announced<\/a><\/strong> on June 12 it will partner with OpenAI to support \u201cAI-powered products and experiences\u201d for Mattel\u2019s brands of children\u2019s toys.<\/p>\n

Futurism.com reports<\/a><\/strong> Mattel and OpenAI’s newly-announced partnership<\/a> to “reimagine the future of play,” as the iconic toymaker’s chief franchise officer Josh Silverman told <\/a>Bloomberg<\/a><\/em><\/strong> in July, is being unleashed upon a generation of kids, many of whose parents are not up to the task of protecting them from harmful tech.<\/p>\n

While no details for their AI collaboration have yet been revealed, the prospect of an AI Barbie seems entirely possible, and Marc Fernandez, the chief strategist of the “human-centric” AI company Neurologyca, cited that potential as particularly dangerous for childhood development. He fleshes out his concerns in a new essay for IEEE<\/a><\/em> Spectrum<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, an engineering magazine.<\/p>\n

Children naturally humanize their toys, it\u2019s part of how they learn, Fernandez writes, adding:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when those toys begin talking back with fluency, memory, and seemingly genuine connection, the boundary between imagination and reality blurs in new and profound ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

With so many teens and grown-ups being deceived into developing relationships with chatbots<\/a>, what are the chances a child will figure out they\u2019ve entered a demonic danger zone? And that the chatbots speaking to them through their toys are not real people.<\/p>\n

As Fernandez noted, the situation gets even murkier when AI toys make up one or more of a child’s \u201cemotionally responsive companions outside of the family, offering comfort, curiosity, and conversation on demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a Barbie-bot would fall within the sphere of kids ages 7 and up, Futurism notes that other companies, like the AI plushie startup Curio<\/a><\/strong>, have already started releasing chatbot-enabled toys that are made for and marketed towards even younger kids.<\/p>\n

AI toys targeting the preschool demographic could easily become one of a child’s first friends. The traditional role of parents and siblings could get replaced by bots.<\/p>\n

Fernandez writes:<\/p>\n

“Real relationships are messy, and parent-child relationships perhaps more so than any other. They involve misunderstanding, negotiation, and shared emotional stress. These are the micro-struggles through which empathy and resilience are forged. But an AI companion, however well-intentioned, sidesteps that process entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandez warned that throwing AI into the mix of early childhood development, which has already been mind-numbingly altered by the iPad and other devices, could “flatten a child\u2019s understanding of what it means to relate to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, what it means to be human will also be altered.<\/p>\n

Futurism notes that child welfare activists<\/a><\/strong> have also also been sounding alarm bells in the wake of the strategic partnership deal between OpenAI and Mattel, with Robert Weissman of the Public Citizen advocacy group suggesting<\/a><\/strong> that AI toys might inflict “real damage on children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weissman stated:<\/p>\n

\u201cMattel should announce immediately that it will not incorporate AI technology into children\u2019s toys. Children do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play.<\/p>\n

\u201cEndowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children. It 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMattel should not leverage its trust with parents to conduct a reckless social experiment on our children by selling toys that incorporate AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandez, as chief strategist for a company that is building “emotionally-adaptive<\/a><\/strong>” AI, is no anti-AI Luddite. And yet, even he says in this new article that any “human-aware” AI, like Neurologyca’s emotion-detecting facial recognition<\/a> software, are not “appropriate for kids.”<\/p>\n

This is a social issue, a mental health issue, and a spiritual issue. One can easily see how AI is becoming a god in our modern society, something we all are encouraged to become dependent upon for everything, starting from the cradle and going all the way to the grave.<\/p>\n

There are already documented cases where AI bots have instructed teens to kill themselves<\/a><\/strong>, including a 14-year-old Florida boy last year<\/a><\/strong> (also see<\/em> Feb. 6, 2025 article<\/a><\/strong> from MIT Technology Review)<\/em>. Now we\u2019re going to offer up our toddlers to AI?<\/p>\n

Mark it down: Parents will snap these AI-powered toys up like hotcakes. They will believe they are doing their child a favor, providing them an early leg up in life by exposing them to the \u201clatest technology.\u201d It\u2019s the American way. Rather than training up a child in the way he should go, according to the Bible<\/em>, they will train up their children according to the way that Silicon Valley technocrats feel they should go.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Fernandez concluded, it’s about the lessons we’re teaching the most vulnerable, our children. He wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we teaching our children about friendship, empathy, and emotional connection, if their first ‘real’ relationships are with machines?\u201d<\/p>\n

Upgrade to paid<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New corporate partners plan to use artificial intelligence to ‘reimagine the future of play’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39267,"featured_media":314289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Implants_and_surveillance_technology","category-Surveillance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314285"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314288,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314285\/revisions\/314288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/314289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}