Harvard researchers build an AI toy to study how it changes children’s play
Harvard’s Child-Centered AI Lab built an AI toy and began lab testing it with children, the first phase of a study on AI’s effect on play and development.
Photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels
Researchers at the Harvard Child-Centered AI Lab have built their own AI-enabled toy and started testing it with children in a lab setting, the first phase of a new study into how artificial intelligence changes children’s play, EdTech Innovation Hub reported on August 4, 2026. Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who leads the lab, announced the launch on LinkedIn, saying the team had “just launched the first phase” of the research and had “built our own AI toy and began testing it with children in the lab.”
The Harvard AI toy study is designed in two phases. The current lab-based phase compares how children play with the AI toy against how they play with traditional, non-AI toys. A planned second phase will move testing into participating families’ homes for longitudinal observation, though the lab has not yet disclosed the scale or start date of that phase. The lab intends to track play behavior, language use, social interaction, trust, attachment and persuasion as children interact with the toy over time.
Prior research on AI toys shapes the Harvard AI toy study’s questions
Xu’s team, working with lab co-authors Lauren Girouard-Hallam and Zhonghao Shi, has also produced a companion literature review, “Artificial Intelligence in Toys: Implications for Child Development and Play,” which surveys existing evidence on how interactive toys shape children’s behavior. The review documents specific findings from earlier products and studies that inform the new Harvard research.
| AI-enabled toy or study | Documented effect |
|---|---|
| Hello Barbie (interactive doll) | Scripted dialogue narrowed the range of children’s conversation |
| Talking Rescue Heroes action figures | Narrowed children’s play themes compared with non-talking versions |
| Interactive storytelling chatbot | Children aged 4-8 attributed strong agency to the chatbot, most strongly at age 4 |
| Talking doll (moral-judgment study) | Shifted children’s moral judgments to a degree comparable with a human participant |
| Smart speakers | Children rated them as more factually capable than people; giving a robot a human name increased trust |
Source: Ying Xu, Lauren Girouard-Hallam and Zhonghao Shi, “Artificial Intelligence in Toys: Implications for Child Development and Play” (preprint), as reported by EdTech Innovation Hub, August 4, 2026.
EdTech Innovation Hub’s report is, at this stage, the only news coverage of the study’s launch and draws directly on Xu’s LinkedIn post and the lab’s literature review; no separate results paper from the new lab study has been published yet. The lab’s research is funded by the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund and the Dean’s Office at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
About the Harvard Child-Centered AI Lab
The Harvard Child-Centered AI Lab is led by Ying Xu, who joined the Harvard Graduate School of Education as an assistant professor in 2024 after prior faculty and postdoctoral positions, including at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine. The lab studies how children interact with AI-driven technologies, including conversational agents and connected toys, and how those interactions affect language development, social understanding and trust. Its research draws on collaborators including the Digital Wellness Lab. The newly launched AI toy study builds directly on the lab’s published review of prior toy research, moving from a synthesis of existing evidence to original data collection with a device the team designed itself.
Sources: EdTech Innovation Hub; Harvard Child-Centered AI Lab
Featured image: photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
