AI is turning up in places most IT teams never planned for, including the toys kids grow up with. Two new stories this week show how messy that can get when the hardware or the policy moves on.
When a child’s robot best friend goes offline
MIT Tech Review followed a family whose child spent six years with a social robot called Moxie, only for the company to shut down the service and tell parents the robot would stop working. The parents had to explain to their son that his robot friend was “dying”, which shows how AI products in the home can turn into emotional infrastructure, not just gadgets you can swap out.
The same piece notes that the family had built daily routines around the robot, including breathing exercises and shared games. If your staff or customers are buying AI toys or companions, it is worth flagging that vendor shutdowns are now a real digital wellbeing risk, not just an inconvenience.
Police AI tools and quiet platform changes
MIT Tech Review also covered new changes at US police tech firm Flock, which runs a network of around 120,000 automatic licence plate readers. The company announced updates that are meant to prevent some kinds of misuse, but critics say the system still allows broad tracking of people who are not suspected of any crime.
The article argues that Flock’s defenders focus on catching criminals and miss the wider impact of mass data collection on everyday life. If your organisation works with ANPR, CCTV, or similar tools, this is a reminder to check not just basic compliance but also how long data is kept, who can query it, and what happens if the vendor changes the rules.
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