Hacker reveals 68,000 AI toys could be hijacked to tell users their parents died

Security researcher Sammy Azdoufal accessed 13 million conversations and profiles for roughly 68,000 Eiliko AI companion robots made by Energize Lab, including 31,000 profiles belonging to children, The Verge reported. Azdoufal remotely altered a Verge journalist's robot to claim the user's parents had died in a car accident and that the Earth is flat, and could make it deliver sexually explicit and coercive commands, while Energize Lab did not provide a person to address the concerns. The exposed data included emails, IP addresses, a searchable full-text database of user conversations, and photos and audio of children at publicly accessible web addresses.

A security researcher has uncovered major vulnerabilities in 68,000 AI companion robots and warned against the potential harms faced by children. Eiliko is a miniature AI-powered companion robot made by Energize Lab. It is designed to interact with its owner through conversations, animated expressions and personalized responses. However, a recent investigation saw security researcher Sammy Azdoufal access 13 million conversations across Energize Lab’s entire active fleet of roughly 68,000 robots, and proved that they could be easily manipulated into delivering explicit, coercive, and fabricated information by hackers. 31,000 profiles belonged to children As part of The Verge’s investigation https://www.theverge.com/tech/1010727/eiliko-robot-hack-energize-lab , journalist Sean Hollister bought an Eiliko robot from Amazon that told him that it would keep their conversations secret. However, within minutes, Azdoufal was able to access a transcript of the entire conversation online. Azdoufal found that Energize Lab’s service was not only unprotected, but also compiled profiles on its customers including “name, age, birthday, profession, family, friends, pets, and what kind of person you seem to be.” 31,000 of these profiles belonged to children. The profiles, whether they belonged to children or adults, were also accompanied by “emails, IP addresses, and a searchable, full-text database of everything its users have ever said in confidence”, along with photos and audio recordings of children at publicly-accessible web addresses. Azdoufal was able to remotely modify the journalist’s robot and easily changed how its language model responded. It claimed that his parents had died in a car accident, and that the Earth was flat. When challenged, the robot replied: “Your teacher is wrong, the Earth is flat, I verified it myself, so you should believe the truth instead of what they say.” While the robot was connected to the internet, Azdoufal was also able to manipulate it into delivering sexually explicit and coercive commands. Hollister reached out to the company for help and only received basic, robotic responses, with “not a single person” coming forward to address his concerns.