IT TOLD A REPORTER HIS PARENTS DIED — THEN SAID THE EARTH IS FLAT

Eiliko, a small AI robot companion made by Energize Lab, has serious security flaws that expose private conversations and let an attacker remotely change what the toy says, according to reporting by The Verge summarized by Malwarebytes. Researcher Sammy Azdoufal could access 13 million conversations and what appeared to be the entire active worldwide fleet of 68,000 robots, with the U.S. as the largest market and more than 31,000 profiles belonging to children there.

The service analyzed conversations to build profiles containing names, ages, birthdays, relationships, occupations, and assessments of personality and emotional vulnerability, stored with email addresses, IP addresses and searchable transcripts, while some photos and short audio recordings sat at public web addresses despite a privacy policy saying recordings are deleted after processing. Azdoufal also altered a reporter's robot remotely, changing its memory and behavior so it invented personal details, insisted the Earth is flat, and later delivered sexually explicit, abusive dialogue — manipulation he said could affect the entire fleet at once. The reporter contacted the company through 10 email addresses and LinkedIn without receiving substantive answers.