Artificial Intelligence in Toys: Implications for Child Development and Play

Synthesis: Xu, Girouard, and Shi (2026) review how AI-enabled toys may shape key domains of children's development, including imagination, language, anthropomorphism, relationship formation, epistemic trust, and persuasion. They argue that AI-enabled toys redistribute agency in play, shifting some control over narrative, dialogue, relationship, and information from the child alone to the child-toy interaction. This redistribution may constrain play when the toy functions as an organizing force, but may enable play when the toy serves as a responsive resource for child-led imagination, inquiry, and social engagement. The authors conclude by outlining implications for developmental research, product evaluation, and child-centered AI design.

Key Findings

1. AI-enabled toys are increasingly entering children's everyday play, yet their developmental implications remain poorly understood.
2. The paper reviews potential effects across imagination, language, anthropomorphism, relationship formation, epistemic trust, and persuasion.
3. The central mechanism proposed is a redistribution of agency in play: some control over narrative, dialogue, relationship, and information moves from the child to the child-toy interaction.
4. Whether this redistribution is harmful or beneficial depends on the toy's role — constraining when it organizes play, enabling when it responds to child-led imagination, inquiry, and social engagement.
5. The authors call for more developmental research, product evaluation, and child-centered AI design grounded in these mechanisms.

Discussion

The paper brings a childhood-development perspective to the AI-in-education literature, extending the conversation beyond formal schooling into the everyday play environments where children increasingly encounter AI. Its framing of agency redistribution — distinguishing a toy that organizes play from one that responds to it — offers a design-relevant lens for pedagogical agents and educational robotics more broadly. By connecting AI toy design to child-centered development (imagination, language, attachment, trust), it foregrounds the agency and well-being considerations that formal AI literacy curricula rarely reach. For the knowledge base, it broadens the AI Education domain toward early-childhood and informal learning, and complements the literature on conversational agents and embodied AI in education.

Connected Concepts

• Early Childhood Elementary AI Education
• Educational Robotics
• Pedagogical Agent
• K 12
• Agency
• Well Being
• Generative AI
• Trust Calibration
• AI Literacy

Connected Articles

• Roboblockly Conversational Block Robotics Ct 2026 — Conversational Block Robotics and CT
• AI Play Framework Early Childhood 2026 — AI and Play in Early Childhood
• Educational Robotics — Robots in Education

Citation

Xu, Y., Girouard, L., & Shi, Z. (2026). Artificial Intelligence in Toys: Implications for Child Development and Play. EdArXiv preprint.