HeyOtto Named Best Kid-Friendly AI in the 2026 SafeWise Kids Safety Awards

HeyOtto was just named Best Kid-Friendly AI in the 2026 SafeWise Kids Safety Awards — one of the most respected annual roundups in the kids safety tech space. SafeWise has been testing and evaluating kids safety technology for over a decade, and this year they expanded their awards to include kids AI as a formal category for the first time.

That last part matters to us.

Kids AI Is Now a Real Category — and That's Significant

For a long time, "kids AI" meant one of two things: a novelty toy that could answer trivia questions, or an adult chatbot with a content filter bolted on. Neither was actually designed for kids. Neither earned real safety scrutiny.

SafeWise adding kids AI to their awards isn't just good news for us. It signals that the broader child safety community is starting to treat AI access the same way they treat phones, GPS trackers, and parental control — as something that requires serious evaluation, not just a warning label.

We think that's the right call.

"We evaluated [the kids AI] emerging category carefully, looking for products with strong safety guardrails, parent transparency, and interactions that support healthy development rather than dependency." - SafeWise

What SafeWise Said About HeyOtto

Here's the write-up directly from their awards page:

"Created specifically for kids — with age-adaptive responses, real-time parent alerts, and a 95% independent safety rating — HeyOtto! is AI designed to inform and educate, not manipulate."

The independent safety rating refers to our score on the KORA benchmark, a third-party evaluation we ran independently. We cite it because we didn't write it.

The "inform and educate, not manipulate" framing is the one we're most proud of. That's been our north star since day one. Kids deserve access to the same powerful AI tools that adults use — not a dumbed-down, hedged, overprotected version that treats them like they can't handle information. They can. They just need a platform that was actually built with them in mind.

What "Built for Kids" Actually Means

HeyOtto isn't a general-purpose AI with a kids experience. It's COPPA-compliant by design — not by policy document. The parent layer isn't an afterthought; it's part of the foundation. Age-adaptive responses aren't a slider in a settings menu; they're built into how Otto thinks.

That distinction is what separates kid-centric AI from kid-adjacent AI, and it's what SafeWise was evaluating when they looked at this category. We're glad it showed.

What's Next

We're continuing to build. The HeyOtto Marketplace — where kids can discover and publish AI-built creations — is live and growing. And we're not slowing down on the safety infrastructure that earned recognition like this in the first place.

If you're a parent, educator, or just someone thinking carefully about what responsible kids AI looks like, we'd love for you to try HeyOtto.

Get started at heyotto.app →

HeyOtto is an AI assistant platform built specifically for kids and teens ages 8–18, with full COPPA compliance and a parent visibility layer. Founded in Atlanta, GA.