AI-powered smart toys: interactive friends or surveillance devices?

Smart toys have been on the market for nearly a decade.However, the recent advances in large language models have triggered a new development: smart toys that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI), for example by integrating ChatGPT.Here, we report results from an initial study of the privacy practices of a specific AI toy: the Grok toy from Curio Interactive Inc.Using an experimental black-box study design, we evaluate network traffic and interaction patterns to infer possible privacy issues.We find that the toy transmits a continuous data stream to the servers while it is switched on, which indicates that it could be used for audio surveillance of its environment.In addition, we find a lack of transparency and possible child safety risks, pointing to a need for further work enhancing the transparency and privacy protections for AI toys.