(Publisher's Note: The following news reminded me of a 1998 movie about AI'd Toy Soldiers. It was a fun movie and disturbing at the same time. Well,... here we are. I'll include the trailer so you get my concern)

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If you thought AI poses a threat to people's jobs, professional statuses and social lives, you'd be right. But it's not just adults being affected.

Kids are in the crosshairs of the technocrats' latest mind-manipulating tool. And what better way to do that than to incorporate AI into kids' toys? Well, it's already being done.

Children's toy company Mattel announced on June 12 it will partner with OpenAI to support "AI-powered products and experiences" for Mattel's brands of children's toys.

Futurism.com reports Mattel and OpenAI's newly-announced partnership to "reimagine the future of play," as the iconic toymaker's chief franchise officer Josh Silverman told Bloomberg in July, is being unleashed upon a generation of kids, many of whose parents are not up to the task of protecting them from harmful tech.

While no details for their AI collaboration have yet been revealed, the prospect of an AI Barbie seems entirely possible, and Marc Fernandez, the chief strategist of the "human-centric" AI company Neurologyca, cited that potential as particularly dangerous for childhood development. He fleshes out his concerns in a new essay for IEEE Spectrum, an engineering magazine.

Children naturally humanize their toys, it's part of how they learn, Fernandez writes, adding:

"But when those toys begin talking back with fluency, memory, and seemingly genuine connection, the boundary between imagination and reality blurs in new and profound ways."

With so many teens and grown-ups being deceived into developing relationships with chatbots, what are the chances a child will figure out they've entered a demonic danger zone? And that the chatbots speaking to them through their toys are not real people.

As Fernandez noted, the situation gets even murkier when AI toys make up one or more of a child's "emotionally responsive companions outside of the family, offering comfort, curiosity, and conversation on demand."

While a Barbie-bot would fall within the sphere of kids ages 7 and up, Futurism notes that other companies, like the AI plushie startup Curio, have already started releasing chatbot-enabled toys that are made for and marketed towards even younger kids.

AI toys targeting the preschool demographic could easily become one of a child's first friends. The traditional role of parents and siblings could get replaced by bots.