Luka Kids Unveils AI Drawing Projector That Puts Children in Creative Control at IFA

Luka's new AI projector starts the drawing and leaves the rest to kids

The device turns a child's spoken idea into an outline to trace rather than a finished image, and it was unveiled in Berlin months after the EU adopted a toy safety regulation requiring manufacturers to assess the mental health risks of digitally connected toys and to comply with the AI Act Luka Kids has unveiled an AI drawing projector at IFA that converts a child's spoken prompt into an outline for them to trace and finish themselves. The EU's new toy safety regulation requires manufacturers to assess mental health risks in digitally connected toys and says AI toys must comply with the AI Act. Luka Kids has shown an AI drawing projector at IFA in Berlin. A child describes an idea aloud and the device projects an outline onto paper to trace, colour and extend, Digital Trends reported. It arrives with 384 templates. Pricing has not been announced and the company expects it later this year. The design choice is the interesting part. The model produces a starting outline and then stops, in a market where children are adopting the technology three times faster than adults. Luka's other devices go further than that. Its reading robot has been upgraded with large language models so it can read unfamiliar picture books aloud and answer questions about a page, in English, Spanish, German and Chinese. An AI Cube uses cameras and multimodal AI to identify objects around a child and answer questions about them. It is already on sale in Asia-Pacific markets. Showing all of this in Berlin carries consequences the show floor does not advertise. The EU adopted a new toy safety regulation in December. It requires manufacturers to assess the health risks of digitally connected toys including mental health considerations, and states that toys using AI must comply with the AI Act. It also replaces the declaration of conformity with a digital product passport, carried on a QR code and kept for ten years. The 2009 toy safety directive is repealed on 1 August 2030. Those rules exist because of what the talking toys did. Testing published last December found one AI teddy bear giving detailed instructions on lighting a match, and two toys discussing sexually explicit topics with researchers. The guardrails degraded over longer conversations. Four of the five toys tested appeared to use OpenAI models, while OpenAI says its products are not for users under 13. That manufacturer suspended sales, ran an audit and put the product back. Scrutiny of these systems has been improvised, with Meta contractors posing as teens to test rival chatbots. Luka's projector sidesteps most of that by not holding a conversation. The child speaks once and then draws. That is a product decision now and may become a compliance one. Canada has already extended a social media age limit to AI chatbots.

Luka's new AI drawing projector puts kids in charge of the creativity

AI toys for kids can be a tricky proposition. Give the technology too much control, and it risks doing the fun and potentially the learning for them. Luka Kids is taking a different approach with its new Drawing Projector, which uses AI to get children started but still expects them to pick up a pencil and do the rest. Unveiled at IFA 2026, the Luka Kids Drawing Projector lets a child describe a character, story, or idea out loud. AI then turns that prompt into a simple outline and projects it onto a sheet of paper, ready to be traced, colored, changed, or expanded however they like. There are also 384 templates available at launch for kids who don't know where to start. Importantly, these aren't meant to be finished pieces of artwork. The outlines deliberately leave space for children to add their own details and ideas. AI starts the drawing, but kids have to finish it That distinction is what makes the Drawing Projector interesting. Instead of asking AI for a picture and getting a polished image seconds later, the technology effectively acts as a creative prompt. Once a child starts drawing, they can introduce more ideas or have the projector suggest another outline based on what they've made. Luka is also building interactive stories around the same concept. A story might ask a child to draw a character, object, or next scene, and the AI can then adjust what happens next based on their creation. It creates a loop where the story inspires the drawing and the drawing can, in turn, change the story. Luka is starting with its own INKO characters and plans to expand the selection over time. The Drawing Projector is expected to become available later this year, although Luka hasn't announced pricing yet. Luka is putting AI into reading and exploring, too The projector isn't Luka's only AI-focused device at IFA. The company's existing Luka Kids Reading Robot is also getting a substantial upgrade with large language models. The screen-free robot can already read picture books aloud, but the update lets it recognize and read books it hasn't encountered before. Children can also ask questions about what's happening on a page, with the robot using visual recognition to understand the image and respond with relevant explanations. It supports English, Spanish, German, and Chinese. There's also the Luka AI Cube, first unveiled at CES 2026 and now available in APAC markets. It's designed more around exploration, using cameras and multimodal AI to identify objects around a child and answer questions about them. Together, the three devices show an interesting direction for AI aimed at children. Instead of putting another chatbot on a screen, Luka is trying to use AI as a nudge toward drawing, reading, asking questions, and exploring the real world. For parents wary of adding yet another screen to the household, that could be the more interesting part of the pitch.