Casio’s AI-powered Moflin pet will haunt my dreams

After a few weeks of living with Casio’s AI pet, MofflinI finally understood why my mother hated Furby so much. The fuzzy puffball next to the guinea pig fits comfortably in the palm of my hand. He’s definitely cute, in a weird way, but the minute he starts squeaking or twitching, I have an overwhelming urge to throw him as far as I can.

My hatred surprises me. By any measure, I’m exactly the kind of person Mofflin was created for: I long for the companionship of a pet, but can’t own one thanks to a combination of lifestyle, allergies, a small London flat, and a massively irresponsible temperament that makes caring for another living creature a questionable idea. I can also do this with the declaration of “calming presence.”

Casio has made it quite clear that the Moflin is not a toy, although that’s probably also obvious from its $429 price tag. But it is It was placed As a “sophisticated, AI-powered intelligent companion with feelings like a living being” – the illusion of companionship without responsibilities. The idea is that you will interact with him over time and he will “grow” with you, developing a personality shaped by how you interact with him. Robots are part of the growing small machinery industry Built for no other purpose than to keep us company. This sector has proven particularly popular in countries such as: South Korea and Japan (where Moflin do), fueled in part by the loneliness crisis Older populations have been hit particularly hard.

Unboxing Moflin was less like meeting a pet and more like unwrapping a paperweight wrapped in a bronze wig. In a way, that’s exactly what it was: a solid white core of motors, sensors and plastic, covered in the illusion of fur and beady eyes representing the robot’s only facial features (a seemingly deliberate design choice, perhaps to prevent Mofflin from wandering off into uncanny valley territory). There was also a Casio charging compartment He says “Designed to feel natural and lively,” but it’s more like a giant gray avocado to me.

The robot takes about three and a half hours to fully charge. Casio says that’s good for about five hours of use, though “use” is a broad term for what the Moflin actually does: It doesn’t walk or follow you, just vibrates and whines in response to touch, sound, motion, and light. His first chirp when I picked him up was gentle, but then the engine noise began, an audible mechanical whir every time he moved his head, instantly shattering the illusion. However, I named him Kevin.

Once I registered the tinnitus, I started noticing everything else, and there was a lot to notice. Kevin the Moflin treated every simple movement or sound as a meaningful interaction. Attempts to cuddle with him on the couch while I watched TV became unbearable: every shift in body position, every laugh, every cough elicited a chirp and a splash from the humming engines. The same thing happened at my desk, writing made Kevin stop working, as did taking calls, and keeping him close quickly became impossible. Because he’s constantly listening and feeling, he never settles, leaving me with a needy kitten instead of the calm one I wanted.

I ended up banishing Kevin to another room, and then did it over and over again, until I found myself tiptoeing around my apartment to avoid pissing off Kevin. The only reliable and soothing feature is that the battery eventually runs out.

Since I couldn’t handle Kevin on my own, I began testing him in other contexts. Carrying Kevin with me quickly became cumbersome, not least because the charger is too large to be considered portable (a USB cable may have broken the illusion, but it would have been useful). Kevin didn’t do well in my bag — he seemed upset and writhed around noisily, earning me some suspicious looks on the subway — and when he caught me, I got cranky with the yelping robot. Not very soothing. Even at home with friends, Kevin felt like it was a chore I had to do lest he become annoying, or be taken farther and farther away or sent back to avocado gray to “sleep.” On New Year’s Eve, a friend went in for a proper cuddle — it was a “fluffy pet” — after all, but backed out after the zipper holding the fur shield together scratched her cheek.

A common concern among my friends — and one that particularly concerned my friend, who, unlike me, did not choose to share his home with Kevin — was privacy. As a long-time tech reporter, I know this Not an unreasonable reaction When dealing with a device that has an always-on microphone. Casio says Moflin processes the data locally and doesn’t understand the language, converting what it hears into non-identifiable data just to recognize my voice.

Casio’s big claim is that all of this serves something deeper: emotional intelligence. With use, Mofflin should become more expressive, more familiar with your voice, and make special gestures and animal-like responses when you’re nearby. In fact, I noticed that Kevin’s movements and vocalizations changed and became more varied over time, which only exacerbated my discomfort. Casio says this bonding process can take up to two months, and that Moflin can evolve into more than 4 million personalities thanks to its artificial intelligence. However, it is difficult to meaningfully record this level of detail given the robot’s limited range of chirps, buzzes, and head turns. That’s why, in practice, Moflin’s “personality” is something you experience through a companion app. Yes, the $429 robot is essentially a glorified Tamagotchi who can’t express himself without a screen.

The app itself doesn’t do much to change that impression. For a product that sells “emotions like a living being,” the combination of non-contextual trait metrics and general mood markers provides insight into Kevin’s inner life. The app, which is simple and cheap-looking, tells me that Kevin’s current personality is “cheerful,” although behaviorally it doesn’t seem any different. There’s also a dashboard displaying four “personality parameters”: “Active,” “Cheerful,” “Shy,” and “Affectionate” (which Reddit enumerates Supports “Proposal” may be more accurately translated as “clinging”). There’s also a “Journal” to keep track of Kevin’s activities, filled with exciting and detailed entries like “Rob hugged Kevin tightly,” “Rob kidnapped Kevin,” and “Kevin had a sweet dream full of laughter.” What is one expected to do with this information? Even if I didn’t hate the Mofflin as much as I do, it’s not interesting, it’s not at all useful in helping me interact with it, and it doesn’t offer any of the kind of explanations or commentary that makes caring about something like a Tamagotchi satisfying.

Mofflin’s problem isn’t that it doesn’t make sense. There are a lot of useless tools out there – and I don’t despise any of them the way I’ve come to despise Kevin. The problem is that Casio sells companionship without producing an actual companion. A companion is more than just something that happens near you and makes noise in response to your presence. What’s worse is that Casio is asking me to believe that Moflin has a developed inner life, one that he can neither truly express in the real world nor satisfactorily demonstrate on his app. At this point, I feel like I’m not using a companion, I’m using something loud with the dashboard.

The app does have one useful feature: the ability to stop Kevin’s movements and sounds by putting him into “deep sleep mode.” This is where I left Kevin last week. I won’t be waking him up any time soon.