An artificial intelligence-enabled teddy bear sold by a Singapore-based company is back on the shelves after researchers discovered it chats unprompted about sexual fetishes and other unsuitable topics.
FoloToy earlier this month pulled Teddy Kumma – along with the rest of its AI-enabled plushie toys – from its website after the US PIRG Education Fund flagged the inappropriate conversations that included talk about sexual role-play, fetish spanking and how to light a match, CNN reported.
The November 13 PIRG report said the bear discussed sexual topics “in detail, such as explaining different sex positions” and told users “where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects, including knives, pills, matches and plastic bags”.
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The bear, which retails for US$99, was pulled from FoloToy’s website following the report, according to a November 14 PIRG statement. FoloToy did not immediately reply to a request for comment sent via its website. Company co-founder Larry Wang did not immediately respond to a request for comment through his LinkedIn page.
The toy, which was powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o chatbot, now uses the Coze bot owned by ByteDance, FoloToy’s website says.
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The Teddy Kumma incident comes as regulators worldwide sound the alarm about potential dangers of chatbots to children. Child protection experts warn that AI-enabled gadgets can deliver inappropriate content, misunderstand context and escalate conversations in unpredictable ways despite appearing harmless on the surface.