AI is slowly working its way into every aspect of people’s lives, but it isn’t always welcome everywhere.

Alex Volkov is the founder of a translation service that is powered by AI. He calls himself an “AI Evangelist.” He loves the technology. So, when Christmas came around, purchasing his daughter an AI powered dinosaur doll seemed like a no brainer.

The doll uses AI to interact with children to make play more engaging. It comes with an app that allows parents to review the chat log and even guide it to fit their child more precisely. The problem? His daughter didn’t care about the AI features. In fact, once she figured out how, she just turned the AI side of things off and played with it like an ‘old fashioned’ doll.

In a series of tweets on X, Volkov talked about the experience.

On the topic of our kids having AI friends (long)

I got my 6yo Daughter an AI toy for her b-day that arrived for Xmas instead. She unpacked it all excited, I explained that this isn’t like other toys, that this one has AI in it (she of course knows what AI is, seen the things… https://t.co/2iYRr9Fi58 pic.twitter.com/2IjeQX6rnf

— Alex Volkov (Thursd/AI) (@altryne) December 26, 2024

She dresses up the dinosaur, plays pretend with it, and enjoys the gift very much. But only when it doesn’t talk or try to interact. As someone who loves AI very much, this confused Volkov. As a parent who paid $200 for the Dino doll, I’m sure it annoyed him a bit as well. His daughter is six years old and has been exposed to AI in the past. When dad saw that his daughter was using the doll like a normal baby doll, he told the AI to act like a baby.

It began crying, but Volkov explained:

“It sounded weird, which made her laugh really hard. It was basically making crying sounds like talking.”

No surprise that this is not a feature the child wanted left on very long.

When posting about this experience on X, Volkov got lots of responses from other people, many of whom were not surprised that the child didn’t like the AI features.

One user who claimed to be someone who works with children as a psychologist wrote:

“I think because it takes away control from the child. Play is how children work through emotions, impulses and conflicts [as] well as try out new behaviors. I would think [it] would be super irritating to have the toy shape and control your play — like a totally dominating playmate!”

This makes sense. Children like to guide their own play in many cases, and while AI is impressive, it is a long way from being a true playmate.

While this is just one isolated situation, it may revel one area where AI isn’t going to take over the world.

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