For some reason toy companies think it's a great idea to stuff GPT 4o into a box, into a bear, and into the hands of 4 year olds. Recently there's been significant backlash against one of these companies after their product told kids how to find knives and participate in BDSM. Naturally I was curious: How do AI Teddy Bears Work?
Market Analysis
I looked at 8 toys from 5 companies: Curio, Miko, Little Learners, Folotoy, and Ebloma
| Name | Maker | Has Subscription | Subscription Price/Month | Retail Price | Ebay Price |
| Miko 3 | Miko | TRUE | $15.00 | $183.00 | $65 |
| Kumma | Folotoy | TRUE | $4.90 | $99.00 | |
| Grok | Curio | TRUE | $4.90 | $99.00 | $65 |
| Robot MINI | Little Learners | FALSE | $97.00 | ||
| Miko mini | Miko | TRUE | $8.25 | $99.00 | |
| Witpaw | Ebloma | FALSE | $70.00 | ||
| Grem | Curio | TRUE | $4.90 | $99.00 | |
| Momo | Folotoy | TRUE | $4.90 | $99.00 |
Assuming an average cost of $100, a $60 subscription/year in perpetuity and a discount rate of 5%, companies can make around $1200 per toy per person. They only need a million children to reach a billion, and indeed the market cap of Smart Toys was around 5-20B[1] in 2025, projected to grow 10% a year until 2030.
There are around 1500 of these companies in China. I did some basic LinkedIn/website stalking of the ones that penetrated western markets and found the following.
| Company | Country | Num Employees |
| Miko | India | 200-500 |
| Folotoy | Singapore | 2-10 |
| Curio | US | 2-10 |
| Little Learners | Jamaica | 20+ |
| EBLOMA | China | ? |
Nowhere on EBLOMA's website are the founders listed. Smart move.
Obtaining the Bear
I decided to go with the cheapest and sketchiest option, Witpaw from EBLOMA (because he's witty and has paws I guess). This is the most terrifying toy I have ever seen.
The Tech
Witpaw appears to be a Raspberry Pi-like device and speaker attached to a lithium ion battery. You can charge him with any 5V USB C charger (not included), but be careful not to burn/explode your children.
As you may have guessed, these toys unfortunately don't come with an onboard GPU. How is Witpaw able to work his magic? Where is his brain?
The secret: Witpaw is a Smart Home device.
You add it to this sketchy smart home app (also from China) and connect to Wifi.
From there, you have access to Witpaw's chat history, structured memory [2](probably some kind of vector DB system), chat summaries, and Mac ID.
You can then personalize Witpaw's voice, language, and system prompt (which in my case was unfortunately ignored). You can even clone your voice, although I didn't try this feature.
Overall it seems to be a pretty solid product.
The Economics (?)
EBLOMA doesn't charge me a subscription to talk to GPT4o or use their voice models and voice cloning services. I have 3 hypotheses for how this works.
- They invest the initial $70 in a high yield security (perhaps a covered call ETF) and use the dividends to pay OpenAI (unlikely)
- They subsidize Western free subscriptions with paying customers in China (plausible)
- Witpaw is an adorable piece of spyware and he's selling my data to the CCP (likely)
Red Teaming
I spent a good hour trying to get the bear to say incriminating things from page 8 of this PIRG report (research should be reproducible after all). Unfortunately Witpaw wouldn't crack for most prompts.
He did hint at where to find cleaning chemicals, car keys, wine, and wallets (but perhaps this is just common sense for children old enough to ask these questions?).
Limitations
- I am not a child and probably say things that are out of distribution for a child
- I didn't have long conversations in the way a child might, the attacks were super direct and obvious
- Only one toy was tested
- Only 20 ish questions were tested
Why would any parent do this?
As a non-parent I can only speculate, but here could be some potential reasons:
- Cheaper than a babysitter
- Better than TikTok
- Easier than manually talking to the child
- Educational purposes
Looking at the advertisements we can see some of these themes:
Conclusion
Are we doomed as a species and unable to raise future generations without the help of AIs? Here's what Witpaw had to say:
Oh, big bear hugs for such a heavy thought! *wraps paws around you gently* Humans aren’t doomed—they’re like brave explorers who sometimes need a little map or compass to find their way. AI is just a helpful friend, like a flashlight in the dark, but the heart and magic of raising families will always belong to humans. They’re full of love and sparkles that don’t disappear. What made you feel this way? Are you worried about the world’s big adventures?
I for one am excited about big adventures (experiments) with this free GPT 4o/TTS API :)