By Blessing Nweke
Miko, a maker of artificial intelligence-powered children’s toys, announced Monday it will introduce an AI on-off switch for its core technology following mounting political pressure and scrutiny of its products.
The company said parents and caregivers will now have full control over whether to enable or disable the conversational AI features on its Miko 3 and Miko Mini robots. “Miko is putting full control in the hands of the parents and caregivers with an ON/OFF toggle option,” the company said in a press release.
Miko’s interactive robots feature touchscreen faces, play music and games, and use AI chatbots powered by large language models to converse with children. The company has collaborated with Google, using Google Cloud and its Gemini AI models, according to a 2024 blog post.
The move comes after Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., raised concerns about a website that allegedly allowed public access to thousands of AI-generated responses addressed to specific children. NBC News reviewed some recordings before the site became inaccessible last week.
Miko CEO Sneh Vaswani told NBC News the company did not leak user data and does not store children’s voice recordings, but did not directly address the recordings in question. Blackburn criticized the new parental controls as an “eleventh-hour attempt to save face” following what she described as a cybersecurity breach.
Ritvik Sharma, Miko’s senior vice president of growth, said the feature had long been planned and was unrelated to the online postings.
AI toys remain largely unregulated in the United States, even as their popularity surges. Experts warn that large language models can be vulnerable to “jailbreaks,” potentially generating inappropriate responses. Meanwhile, the AI toy market continues to expand globally, particularly in China.
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