Safety Experts Warn AI Ads Are Making It Unsafe To Buy Things Like Car Seats Online

Whether you love using AI to write your grocery lists or threw up in your mouth a little bit when OpenAI’s CEO said he couldn’t imagine raising a newborn without ChatGPT’s help, you probably have an opinion on AI at this point. Well, health and safety experts have theirs too — and it could be described, in a word, as concerned. One car seat safety expert is now warning his followers about AI car seat reviews that misrepresent the products, encouraging anyone buying a product like this to go straight to the manufacturer for information from now on.

In a video posted to his TikTok and Instagram, Jamie Grayson, a dual-certified child passenger safety technician and speaker on car seat safety, shared an AI-generated car seat review that had him very concerned. The fake review shows a man riding in the backseat of a car talking about the features of the Baby Trend PROtect 2-in-1 Folding Booster Car Seat. The AI generation gets many things wrong, from how it pronounces “protect” to the fabric and brand name embroidered on the seat. But one of its errors is potentially dangerous to consumers, Grayson said.

The Baby Trend seat in the video is a booster seat, but the AI generation depicts it with a harness that it does not actually have. “If you click the shopping link, it takes you to a listing for the real booster; the problem is average consumers will not notice this. They’ll see something at a lower price point, that’s it’s a car seat with a harness, they’ll click, and they’ll buy it and get a car seat that does not fit their needs,” said Grayson. (The video was posted by an account generating fake reviews of products across all kinds of categories, Grayson said, and was not produced or shared by Baby Trend.)

Over the phone, Grayson told me AI-generated car seat reviews have been popping up on YouTube for some time now, usually in the form of roundups like “The Top 5 Rotating Car Seats.” They often misrepresent the product’s features or what size child they’d be appropriate for, he said. He worries that fake influencers and “experts” will hit our feeds next.

“We already have such a problem on the internet in general with influencers giving out advice they’re not qualified to talk about. Somebody can type in a couple keywords, and they get this figure talking about stuff that’s not validated in any way... Even when you ask ChatGPT for car seat information now, it runs the gamut from accurate to inaccurate,” he said.

What should consumers do to buy safe products?

When shopping for something like a car seat, or any product you want to ensure is safe and properly tested, buy it directly from the manufacturer or a reputable retailer, Grayson said. Do not buy car seats on TikTok. Baby Trend is the only legitimate North American brand selling there, Grayson said; all other car seats are counterfeit dupes and not properly crash tested. In November, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall for one Doona dupe sold on AliExpress because its harness system failed in stroller mode, making it possible for babies to fall out.

Even if you’re just browsing social media for reviews and product demos, be careful. “Make sure anybody you’re getting information from is a currently credentialed child passenger safety technician. There are a lot of us on the internet doing this work,” Grayson said. You can also visit the manufacturer’s website directly to see exactly what features a product boasts, and brands often post thorough demo videos on their own verified YouTube channels.

It’s a sad world where parents can’t turn to TikTok or Instagram to see what other moms and dads like them think of their car seats — these are often a major expense when prepping for a baby, and you want to pick the right one. But now more than ever, it matters that we go straight to the source for our information and our purchases.