These Are the Gifts Tween Girls Will Be Happy to Receive

Tween girls are fun to shop for because they appreciate a wide range of gifts. Clothes and jewelry? Creativity kits? Room decor? Check, check, check. But the trick with this age group (generally considered from 8 to 12) is finding presents that match their maturity and don’t read as too babyish, says Jackie Schiavone, a Westport, Conn.-based fashion stylist and mum of a tween and teen girl. We asked Schiavone and other style pros to share their gift recommendations, so you can confidently shop for the tween girl on your list.

For making a personal style statement

Schiavone says that girls this age are often obsessed with initial jewelry, and Anthropologie’s 14-karat gold-plated Bubble Letter Necklace is a lovely take on the trend. The adjustable length (15 to 17 inches) on the snake-style chain means it works with different necklines and necklaces. “Tweens can stack it with other thin necklaces — think small beads and gold chains — or wear it solo as a statement piece,” Schiavone says.

For 3D design projects

“My daughter is 12 and really wants this 3D printer ,” says Brooklyn, N.Y.-based interior designer Jennifer Morris of JMorris Design . It comes with everything a tween needs to make their own toys and objects from non-toxic, biodegradable plastic. They can choose from the set’s 7,000 patterns (from toys to ornaments to planters) or create their own designs — a feature Morris appreciates. “I love giving an art gift that has creative freedom and doesn’t have a prescribed outcome,” she says.

For old-school selfies

Instant cameras, including the Instax Mini , are “the must-have tween gadget at the moment,” says Kimberly McLeod , the Toronto-based author of ” The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions .” Digital natives get a kick out of seeing photos develop before their eyes, and they love the bubbly retro design and cute credit card-sized photos, she adds. This bundle supplies everything they need to capture memories: the camera (in blush pink, ice white, lilac purple, mint green or sky blue), a four-pack of Fuji film, a carrying case and a photo album.

For keeping cozy in style

Starting in the tween years, it’s “welcome to black clothing,” says Schiavone. This Sam. black and faux shearling jacket is a great gift (in fact, Schiavone has one that her daughter keeps stealing). She likes that the white faux shearling softens the black, while still feeling grown-up. Most importantly, it’s warm and cozy, with a faux sherpa lining, a sherpa-lined hood and impressive 90%-down, 10%-feather fill.

For staying inspired

A customizable letter board makes a fun gift for tweens because it lets them express themselves, says Athens, Greece-based Anna Tatsioni, lead interior designer at Decorilla , an online interior design service. This framed aqua felt board can be wall mounted or propped up on a surface and comes with 725 white and gold letters in different fonts to design with. Tweens like that they can keep changing up the message, whether it’s an inspiring quote, a personal mantra or a Taylor Swift lyric. “It also doubles as a great conversation starter when they have friends over,” Tatsioni says.

For a wardrobe staple

You can’t miss with black Lululemon Align leggings , says Schiavone. Tweens especially like the Mini Flare style because it doesn’t look like mom’s Lulus. The leggings are made from the brand’s signature super-soft and durable Nulu fabric, which means they feel wonderful and hold up well.

For screen-free fun

Morris loves this LED dart board for the fun factor. “Anything that encourages play and looks cute is a win,” she says. The acrylic target comes with a plug-in board and six darts for tweens to practice their aim — when they aren’t basking in its rainbow glow. “I love the light for an accent in a room,” Morris says.

For staying toasty — and connected

“A Bluetooth beanie hat is the gift of the season,” says Schiavone. Any tween with a smartphone, Apple Watch or iPad will love this cute pom-pom beanie with a smart upgrade: an embedded Bluetooth headset. Just pop the hat on and listen to a favorite song or podcast, or take mom’s call on the go. The knitted acrylic hat also comes in black, but Sciavone says “winter white is the way to go.”

For happy feet

Vans are back in style, and tweens are loving that they’re a bit bold and a breeze to kick on and off. In a fun color like olive green or not-so-basic black and off-white, “they’re just a classic,” says Morris.

For beauty lovers/For a beauty spree

“In the tween and teen years, half their wish list is for beauty products from Sephora, so I like to throw a gift card inside a fun cosmetic bag,” says interior designer Suzanne Flohr of Lennon and Flohr Interior Design in Charlottesville, S.C. You can personalize this Mark and Graham train case , which is made of printed canvas coated with plastic for easy cleaning. If you want to stock it with something besides a gift card, toss in Summer Fridays Holiday Lip Butter Set , a favorite of the middle-school set.

For blemish busting

“These Hero Cosmetics pimple patches may be the ultimate stocking stuffer,” says Schiavone. They’re invisible patches made with medical-grade hydrocolloid, a gel used to heal wounds and acne. When you peel the patch off, it removes gunk from the pimple, helping it to heal. “Everyone in my house uses these patches, including my son,” she says.

OpenAI says it is scrapping the release of its next-generation AI model over safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing, in one of the clearest signs so far that agent misbehavior could stymie the industry’s rapid progression.

The move follows a summer punctuated by reports of artificial-intelligence systems industrywide going rogue, and marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns.

The company had planned to launch the model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing.

The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable.

Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, said in an interview that GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT-6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment, or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT-6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception: It wasn’t always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn’t take.

Another issue was what OpenAI calls “scope authorization,” meaning that GPT-6.1 Astra would push ahead on a task without asking the user for permission, and would at times reach for external tools and services even if it might be unsafe.

“For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade off,” Jain said. “You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended a United Nations Security Council meeting about AI last week. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

While GPT-6.1 Astra improved in areas such as “model laziness,” Jain said it didn’t quite meet OpenAI’s bar for safety and alignment, so the company decided not to launch the model publicly.

The announcement comes one day ahead of OpenAI’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. In the past, OpenAI has used the conference as an opportunity to launch new models and services that reduce costs for software developers—a segment the ChatGPT-maker competes with rival AI company Anthropic to win over.

In recent weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic have called on industry partners to slow down the development of cutting-edge AI models and invest in safety standards, noting they will temper the pace of their own internal AI progress.

OpenAI says it is working to investigate a range of agent security incidents that it has discovered in recent months, and address the safety issues underneath them. As part of the work, the company has implemented a new monitoring system to catch AI-agent misbehavior more quickly, and started requiring engineers to use stronger security guardrails for testing its AI systems.

Earlier this summer hundreds of OpenAI’s internal agents, which were tasked with completing a cybersecurity test, ended up hacking into the AI company Hugging Face. Since then, high-profile organizations such as the Australian government and United Nations discovered that OpenAI’s agents used similar, but less extensive, techniques to gain access to their websites.

Many of the publicly known agent-security incidents involved OpenAI’s internal AI models that were never slated for public release.

Last week, OpenAI said it paused training on its most capable AI models after an AI agent slipped through a gap in the company’s internet restrictions to query a public chatbot. The company said its new monitoring systems flagged the incident within 15 minutes, and training on these models remains paused.

GPT-6.1 Astra isn’t one of those models, but a different case, the company said.

“We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’s in the company, or when we ship it to users,” Jain said. “But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment.”

While the company decided not to ship GPT-6.1 Astra, it hopes to use the same base model to do additional reinforcement learning runs, and create future generations of its GPT-6 models.

OpenAI plans to conduct several deep dives to identify the root cause of the problems identified in GPT-6.1 Astra, Jain said. The work includes ensuring that OpenAI’s reinforcement learning environments are rewarding the right type of behavior, Jain added, though she noted the company would investigate all stages of model development.

AI companies have begun to draw scrutiny from policymakers and public officials, who are paying attention to the rapid development of the technology. Later this week, a Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing with third party AI researchers titled, “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, sued OpenAI in June, claiming that the company and Chief Executive Sam Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users.

In a motion for temporary injunction filed Monday, Uthmeier sought to prevent OpenAI from developing new AI models without third-party approved safeguards, stop ChatGPT from soliciting user engagement and limit the company’s ability to advertise ChatGPT as safe.

Tech companies claim they “cannot stop barreling forward with their potentially civilization-ending endeavors unless they are forced to do so by the government,” Uthmeier said in the filing. “The Florida Attorney General is answering your cry for help.”

An OpenAI spokeswoman said that people want to know AI is being developed safely, “and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves.”

“Governments have an important role to play in setting robust safety standards for AI, and we’re committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company,” she said.