AI toy maker Miko said it will add a parental on/off switch for the conversational features in its Miko 3 and Miko Mini robots after lawmakers and watchdogs raised safety and privacy concerns. The move follows reports that thousands of the toys’ AI-generated responses linked to individual children were accessible online; the site was later taken down. The company, which uses Google’s Gemini models via Google Cloud, said the control had been in development and denied leaking user data, while Sen. Marsha Blackburn criticized the step as a last-minute response to a cybersecurity lapse. The episode highlights growing scrutiny of largely unregulated AI toys, whose large-language-model chat features remain vulnerable to misuse despite built-in content filters, even as the market expands rapidly.
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