{"id":5058,"date":"2025-08-17T00:11:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T00:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/ai-powered-stuffed-animals-are-coming-for-your-kids\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T00:11:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T00:11:36","slug":"ai-powered-stuffed-animals-are-coming-for-your-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/ai-powered-stuffed-animals-are-coming-for-your-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do A.I. chatbots packaged inside cute-looking plushies offer a viable alternative to screen time for kids?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&rsquo;s how the companies selling these A.I.-powered kiddie companions are marketing them, but The New York Times&rsquo; Amanda Hess has some reservations. She recounts a demonstration in which Grem, one of the offerings from startup Curio, tried to bond with her. (Curio also sells a plushie named Grok, with no apparent connection to the Elon Musk-owned chatbot.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hess writes that this is when she knew, &ldquo;I would not be introducing Grem to my own children.&rdquo; As she talked to the chatbot, she became convinced it was &ldquo;less an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear&rdquo; and instead &ldquo;more like a replacement for me.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She also argues that while these talking toys might keep kids away from a tablet or TV screen, what they&rsquo;re really communicating is that &ldquo;the natural endpoint for [children&rsquo;s] curiosity lies inside their phones.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hess reports that she did, eventually, let her kids play with Grem &mdash; but only after she&rsquo;d removed and hidden the voice box. They still talked to it and played games with it; then they were ready for some TV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do A.I. chatbots packaged inside cute-looking plushies offer a viable alternative to screen time for kids? That&rsquo;s how the companies selling these A.I.-powered kiddie companions are marketing them, but The New York Times&rsquo; Amanda Hess has some reservations. She recounts a demonstration in which Grem, one of the offerings from startup Curio, tried to bond&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/ai-powered-stuffed-animals-are-coming-for-your-kids\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}