🏀 My kids could not stop laughing at me dunking in a headband

Happy Sunday folks!

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I spent the afternoon testing two new AI video tools with the kids, and it turned into lots of giggles. Plus the first honest data on what parents really think about AI, and a question I get a lot: is Claude safe for kids?

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In this week's email:

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• 🏀 I turned myself into a street basketball player (and our back garden into 1860s New York)
• 📊 What hundreds of parents actually told me about their kids and AI
• 🛡️ Is Claude safe for kids? My honest verdict after a year of testing

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🐿️ I became a street basketball player, and the kids loved it

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That headband-wearing number 74 chancer posting up a 7-foot defender on a New York street court is me. I made the two players and the court as still images first (a structured prompt workflow in Magnific, using Google's Nano Banana 2 model to combine them into one shot), then animated it into a 15-second clip with Seedance (full tutorial coming next week).

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It is not perfect. The AI never actually sinks the dunk, which is either a glitch or the most honest thing it has ever said about my game. Mateo (8), Maria (6) and Conor (4) did not care one bit. They were in stitches at their dad looking a little soft round the middle, and made me replay it over and over 😂

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👉 Watch the full 15 seconds: here​

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Then I tried the opposite. Earlier the kids had to clean the back garden to earn their screen time, with Maria sweeping the stones and the boys picking up burst water balloons. I took that clip and used Kling Omni, a newish tool that edits an existing video rather than making one from scratch, and dropped the whole scene into an 1860s New York street.

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Same kids, same clothes, same sweeping, different century. It did not land exactly as I pictured, but they were fascinated that their chores video could become another time and place entirely.

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📊 I built the first real data set on parents and AI. Here is what it found.

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For months, every parent who takes our 2-minute assessment has answered the same set of questions about their child and AI:

• what worries them
• what their kid is into
• how much they will spend

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As far as I can tell, nobody has ever pulled that together. So I did, and called it The AI Tools for Kids Index.

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It is the first honest picture of how real families actually approach this. Not vendor surveys, not scary headlines. Parents like you. A few of the findings genuinely surprised me:

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• 78% will only consider free tools.
• 79% are completely new to AI or have only dabbled, so if you feel behind, you are firmly in the majority.
• And 65% of parents of 5 to 7 year olds say their child has never touched AI.

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👉 Explore the AI Tools for Kids Index​

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The first parent-sourced AI data set of its kind, and it is live. The full breakdown shifts as more families take part.

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If you haven't already, take the 2-minute assessment and you will see exactly where your own family lands, and your answers become part of the next edition.

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🛡️ Is Claude safe for kids? My honest verdict

I have used Claude with my 8-year-old on and off for about a year, always sitting beside him. The moment that won me over: he heard something about a war on the radio and asked Claude about it, and it gave a calm, age-neutral answer with nothing graphic. That is genuinely hard to get right.

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But it is not a kid-safe product by design. There is no kids mode and no parental dashboard, the terms say 18+, and it can state wrong facts with total confidence. It is the safest general-purpose AI I have tested, but only with you in the room.

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👉 Read the full safety guide: here​

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It covers the exact settings I change, the privacy rules we use, and why I would never hand it to a child to use alone.

That's it for this week. Bit of a mixed bag but hope you liked it! Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

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Niall (AI Dad Lab)

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P.S. Keep an eye out for the basketball tutorial during the week. I will also be talking about AI coding for kids in next week's edition.