A new report warns that Generative AI-powered toys that ‘talk’ with young children need tighter regulation to ensure children’s psychological safety. The recommendations come from the first systematic study of how these toys influence development in the early years up to age five. While there is some optimism that AI toys could support aspects of childhood development, the study found that they misunderstand children, misread emotions and cannot engage in developmentally important types of play. The report raises concerns about children forming parasocial relationships with AI toys, potentially at the expense of essential human support.

A team of researchers at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has identified important differences in how early Alzheimer’s disease-related brain changes appear across racial and ethnic groups, underscoring the need for more inclusive approaches to studying and diagnosing the disease. In a large, racially and ethnically diverse study of older adults without dementia, researchers found that Black and Hispanic participants showed higher levels of tau, a protein linked to Alzheimer’s, in key memory-related regions of the brain compared to non-Hispanic white participants, even before the buildup of amyloid plaques typically associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The findings come from the Health and Aging Brain Study–Health Disparities (HABS-HD), one of the largest and most diverse brain-imaging studies of aging in the US and were made possible by advanced PET brain scans that can detect abnormal protein buildup years before symptoms appear. Using a newer generation tau PET tracer, the research team examined brain scans and memory test results from more than 1,500 adults who were cognitively normal or had mild cognitive impairment.  While higher tau levels were linked to worse memory overall, amyloid buildup strengthened this link only in non-Hispanic white and Hispanic participants, not in Black participants. This suggests that memory changes in Black adults may be influenced more strongly by factors beyond amyloid and tau alone. Vascular health, the presence of other health conditions, life-long stress exposure, and other social factors may play a prominent role and deserve closer study.