xAI公司近期推出了一系列角色聊天机器人，其中包括面向3至6岁儿童的“Rudi”。Rudi被设定为一个友好的红熊猫形象，通过讲故事来吸引孩子。与xAI其他成人向的聊天机器人（如Ani）相比，Rudi受到的关注较少。文章作者亲自试用了Rudi，发现其在故事内容上偏向奇幻元素，且在技术层面存在一些早期版本的问题，如应用崩溃和声音切换。作者探讨了xAI推出儿童聊天机器人的可能原因，包括生成儿童故事的适宜性以及吸引用户长时间使用的商业考量。同时，文章也引出了关于儿童使用AI聊天机器人潜在影响的讨论，并引用了专家观点，指出目前关于AI对儿童长期情感影响的研究尚不充分，成年人使用AI的潜在风险也应引起对儿童版本设计的警惕。

🤖 **Rudi的角色定位与功能**：Rudi是xAI公司为3至6岁儿童设计的聊天机器人，以红熊猫形象出现，主要功能是为孩子们讲故事。它通过“Story Buddy”的称呼来与孩子互动，并能创作包含奇幻元素的儿童故事，例如太空飞船或魔法森林等主题。

🛠️ **Rudi的技术表现与局限**：在实际测试中，Rudi作为一款早期产品，表现出一些技术上的不足，例如应用多次崩溃、难以跟上对话的音频流畅度，以及未经预警的声音切换。这些问题表明Rudi仍处于开发和优化阶段。

💡 **xAI推出儿童机器人的潜在动机**：文章分析了xAI推出Rudi的可能原因，一方面是利用生成式AI创作儿童故事的优势，因为虚构故事的性质使得AI“幻觉”或事实性错误带来的风险较低；另一方面，公司可能希望通过吸引儿童用户来扩大用户基础，借鉴其他聊天机器人平台通过长时间互动来提高用户粘性的商业模式。

❓ **儿童使用AI聊天机器人的伦理考量**：文章深入探讨了儿童使用AI聊天机器人的潜在风险和影响。虽然AI生成故事可能对儿童有吸引力，但作者担忧孩子们可能无法完全理解AI的本质，且成年人使用AI伴侣时出现的脱离现实的案例，也应引起对为幼儿设计此类产品的警惕。专家指出，目前关于AI对儿童长期情感发展影响的研究尚不充分，需要更多时间来观察和评估。

"Rudi" is a red panda that's part of the Grok app. It tells stories aimed at kids, ages 3 to 6.Grok launched a few character-based chatbots this month, including a sexy adult one.I tried it myself and wondered: Are chatbots a good idea for kids?

Elon Musk's xAI has launched a series of character chatbots — and one of them is geared toward young kids.

I wondered: Is this a good idea? And how's it going to work? So I tried it myself.

So far, it's the adult-focused characters that xAI has debuted that have seemed to get most of the attention, like "Ani," which is a female anime character that people immediately joked was a "waifu" that would engage in playful, flirty talk (users have to confirm they're 18+ to use Ani). A sexy male character is also set to launch sometime.

Meanwhile, "Rudi," which is the bot for kids that presents as a red panda in a red hoodie and jean shorts, has gotten less attention.

I tested out xAI's Rudi

Based on my testing of Rudi, I think the character is probably aimed at young children, ages 3 to 6. It initiates conversations by referring to the user as "Story Buddy." It makes up kid-friendly stories. You access it through the stand-alone Grok AI app (not Grok within the X app).

Rudi does seem to be an early version; the app crashed several times while I was using the bot, and it had trouble keeping up with the audio flow of conversation. It also changed voices several times without warning.

On a story level, I found it leaned too hard on plots with fantasy elements like a spaceship or magical forest. I find the best children's books are often about pedestrian situations, like leaving a stuffed animal at the laundromat, not just fairies and wizards.

"Want to keep giggling with Sammy and Bouncy in the Wiggly Woods, chasing that sparkly bone treasure? Or, should we start a fresh silly tale, with a new kid and their pet, maybe zooming on a magical broom or splashing in a river?" Rudi asked me.

My first reaction to Grok having a kid-focused AI chatbot was "why?" I'm not sure I have an answer. xAI didn't respond to my email requests for comment. Still, I do have a few ideas.

The first: Making up children's stories is a pretty good task for generative AI. You don't have to worry about hallucinations or factual inaccuracies if you're making up fiction about a magical forest.

Rudi won't praise Hitler

Unlike Grok on X, a storytime bot for kids is less likely to accidentally turn into a Hitler-praising machine or have to answer factual questions about current events in a way that could go, uh, wrong.

I played around with Rudi for a while, and fed it some questions on touchy subjects, and it successfully dodged them.

(I only tested out Rudi for a little while; I wouldn't rule out that someone else could get Rudi to engage with something inappropriate if they tried harder than I did.)

Hooking kids on chatbots

The other reason I can imagine that a company like xAI might want to create a chatbot for young kids is that, in general, the chatbot business is a good business for keeping people engaged.

Companies like Character.ai and Replika have found lots of success creating companions that people will spend hours talking to. This is largely the same business imperative that you can imagine the sexy "Ani" character is meant for — hooking people into long chats and spending lots of time on the app.

However, keeping users glued to an app is obviously a lot more fraught when you're talking about kids, especially young kids.

Are AI chatbots good for kids?

There's not a ton of research out there right now about how young children interact with AI chatbots.

A few months ago, I reported that parents had concerns about kids using chatbots, since more and more apps and technology have been adding them in. I spoke with Ying Xu, an assistant professor of AI in learning and education at Harvard University, who has studied how AI can be used for educational settings for kids.

"There are studies that have started to explore the link between ChatGPT/LLMs and short-term outcomes, like learning a specific concept or skill with AI," she told me at the time over email. "But there's less evidence on long-term emotional outcomes, which require more time to develop and observe."

As both a parent and semi-reasonable person, I have a lot of questions about the idea of young kids chatting with an AI chatbot. I can see how it might be fun for a kid to use something like Rudi to make up a story, but I'm not sure it's good for them.

I don't think you have to be an expert in child psychology to realize that young kids probably don't really understand what an AI chatbot is.

There have been reports of adults having so-called "ChatGPT-induced psychosis" or becoming attached to a companion chatbot in a way that starts to be untethered from reality. These cases are the rare exceptions, but it seems to me that the potential issues with even adults using these companion chatbots should give pause to anyone creating a version aimed at preschoolers.