Toys that listen, talk, and play: Understanding Children's Sensemaking and Interactions with AI Toys

TL;DR

This study explores how children perceive and interact with AI toys that simulate social behaviors, revealing their curiosity, misunderstandings, and the need for transparent design to support healthy interactions.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights from participatory sessions on children's interactions with AI toys and offers design implications for responsible AI toy development.

Findings

Children view AI toys as social beings and are curious about their capabilities.

Interaction issues can lead to adversarial play and disrupted expectations.

Designing for transparency can improve children's understanding and engagement.

Abstract

Generative AI (genAI) is increasingly being integrated into children's everyday lives, not only through screens but also through so-called "screen-free" AI toys. These toys can simulate emotions, personalize responses, and recall prior interactions, creating the illusion of an ongoing social connection. Such capabilities raise important questions about how children understand boundaries, agency, and relationships when interacting with AI toys. To investigate this, we conducted two participatory design sessions with eight children ages 6-11 where they engaged with three different AI toys, shifting between play, experimentation, and reflection. Our findings reveal that children approached AI toys with genuine curiosity, profiling them as social beings. However, frequent interaction breakdowns and mismatches between apparent intelligence and toy-like form disrupted expectations around play and led to adversarial play. We conclude with implications and design provocations to navigate children's encounters with AI toys in more transparent, developmentally appropriate, and responsible ways.