Not sure what to gift this year? These 6 AI-powered toys might just save the day

The AI powering so many activities in the workplace and at home for adults is starting to come to children through their toys. Regardless of the potential issues around mixing AI and kids’ toys, the fact is that AI toys aren’t a novelty anymore, just a growing section of the toy aisle.

They’re talking, learning, adapting, and in some cases, dancing to your kid’s playlist. From emotionally intelligent plushies to pocket-sized robot pals with a little sass, here are five AI-powered toys you might want to consider as a holiday gift. You’ll probably want to test them yourself before handing them over.

Miko 3 offers children a cheery LED face and AI-fueled delight in answering questions about dinosaurs, quizzing them on vocabulary, and guiding them in short meditations. The $140 robot is somewhere between a digital camp counselor and a virtual life coach, Miko 3 uses voice recognition and conversational AI to customize its interactions based on what your child says and how they respond. It plays games, tells stories, and even dances.

Springer is one of a range of $140 plush AI toys from Curio Interactive. The toy talks using AI, but is more low-key than others on this list as it doesn’t light up or walk across the room. It’s an AI chatbot covered in soft, synthetic fabric. Press its paw, and you can talk about the weather, how volcanoes work, or what birds might dream about. The toy offers educational opportunities in unconventional ways, but mostly wraps fleece around a kid-friendly LLM. For younger kids who might not be ready for full-screen, this could be the preferred way to encourage learning on their own.

The $250 AIBI Pocket AI Pet looks like a cross between a Tamagotchi and a Pixar character. It’s like a pet you don’t have to feed. It uses what the company calls “emotional modeling” and some environmental sensors to simulate a personality that changes over time. Living.AI designed the pet to be expressive, twitchy, and occasionally sassy. AIBI lives on a backpack strap or hoodie for older kids (or adults) and reacts to your voice, your mood, and even your music. It can wiggle when the music is upbeat, will droop when it’s ignored, and perk up the moment you say its name.

Loona is a pet that doesn’t need training to roll up when you call it, spin around in excitement, and encourage you to play with it. The $400 toy offers a mix of conversational AI and enough sensors to navigate a living room without crashing into the furniture. The robot can recognize your face and respond to your voice to follow basic commands. Its reactions can be surprisingly subtle, too. It will tilt its head when the AI is confused, playfully chase invisible objects, and even purr or sigh based on your interactions. Loona is one of the most expensive on this list, but also the most likely to make your actual pet jealous.

PLAi’s Poe is ideal if you’ve ever tried to make up a bedtime story on the spot and ended up improvising a weird mashup of a TV show and whatever happened at your office that day. The $35 AI bear is built specifically for customized, on-demand storytelling. You can tell it to use your child’s name, favorite animal, and wherever they most like to visit, and it will produce a story with a range of voices that actually makes sense. And the stories change every time you request a new one. Kids can also contribute characters or ideas and hear them woven into the tale. As with any AI, Poe can wander into the surreal, but so far, no trend of problematic stories has popped up in the news.

At $429 it’s the most expensive ‘toy’ here because Moflin is actually an emotional AI support ‘animal’. It’s a robot companion that responds uniquely to your interactions. Moflin loves gentle pats and warm cuddles and it delights in being carried around, and you don’t need to worry about allergies as you would with a real pet. Moflin’s emotions evolve naturally, just like a real pet, so it can be grumpy, relaxed, anxious or happy. The richer your interactions with Moflin, the more it will evolve to respond to you.