AI company Embodied announced this week that they would be shutting down following financial difficulties and a sudden withdrawal of funding. Embodied’s main product was Moxie, an AI-powered social robot specifically made with autistic children in mind. The robot itself cost $799.00 and now, following the closure of Embodied, it will cease to function.
Moxie is a small blue robot with a big expressive face straight out of a Pixar movie. The robot used large language models in the cloud to answer questions, talk, and function. With Embodied out of business, the robot will soon no longer be able to make those calls. This outcome was always likely – any cloud based device is subject to the health of the company and LLMs are not cheap to run. This has actually happened before with a company called Vector. But the shocking part is that this was not an old device, it was fairly recent, expensive, and still being sold.
LLMs in a robot that talks to a child? Surely nothing can go wrong with that.
This is a fantastic opportunity to allow parents to explain financial insolvency to their autistic child grieving the loss of their robot companion.
There’s a movie plot hook buried there. About a kid on spectrum whose robot buddy gets killed by the uncaring business. They go “oh no, I’ll have to fix my robot buddy” and go on to become a tech genius. One day, they become a tech millionaire, and the story’s antagonist, the shady businesses partner, goes “look, we’re bankrupt, we have no choice, we have to shut down all of the robot buddies”. And the protagonist remembers the saddest moment of their childhood and are like “no, we can’t do that”.
Isn’t this kind of the plot to the Rick and Morty dog episode but kinda flipped
We are going to be seeing so many of these investor-backed, AI-focused, trend-chasing startups dropping like flies in the next few years as the interest (and VC money) dries up. The landfills of the world are going to fill with even more disposable trash as so many cloud-dependant gadgets go offline.
Never buy any hardware that doesn’t work offline.
That’s why I like to check if someone has already rooted a purpose-built gadget before buying.
My RabbitAI will make a nice little MP3 player when the company folds.
or play Minecraft on it!
This is why I buy NOTHING anymore…everything is integrated with bullshit that will stop working when they want to and the only courses of action I have are don’t buy anything, or buy things and throw them through they windows WHEN they do this.
I choose to save money and buy literally nothing.
same here. I cancelled all subscriptions too. The billionaires have enough money. Not giving them any more of mine. At this point, I only buy food and beer. I’m learning to sew so I can keep my clothes longer too. they will stop making garbage when people stop buying it.
Have you used one of these? My in-laws bought one (WHYYY) for my kids, I said at the time it was just a waste of money that wouldnt last 3 years. Anyway, it was creepy, monotone, and could only remember 1 child’s name. Really not great for interacting with kids.
Your in-laws are fired lmao
Now I wonder if Hello Barbie still works.
An expensive gadget that requires the cloud to function that is designed to manipulate young children into believing that this gadget is their “friend”.
How this is even legal is beyond me.
Autistic children, there is a difference and they do have different needs.
With AI’s propensity for hallucinations, I wouldn’t even remotely trust one of these with my autistic child. The potential for damage, or even just gaslighting are huge.
