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The experience of lose someone dear It’s difficult at any age, but it seems reasonable to imagine that it can be even more complex for a child who loses his best friend.
This is what hundreds of families in the United States are going through, but not because of a tragedy but because of simple business: The company that created a companion robot went bankrupt and turned off all the devices, opening a new debate around this type of links.
Presented in the middle of the pandemic by the company Embodied, Moxie It is a small and very attractive robot that promised to help the youngest members of the house with their social and emotional skills. Equipped with a screen that acted as a face, with big eyes and a lot of expressiveness, the device spoke, responded and even played.
Moxie’s value was between $800 and $1,500. He could start conversations and even make jokes.
With a value that was around 800 and 1,500 dollars, the advertising of Moxie suggested that could be the perfect companion for children on the autism spectrum and the testimonials they published on their website included families saying that thanks to the robot their children “regulate their emotions better, engage in deeper conversations, and gained more self-confidence.”
From successive updates, this “friend” learned not only to converse fluentlybut also to tell jokes and riddles, play guesser-guesser, pose for selfies and tell stories designed to stimulate the creativity and emotional capacity of their little owners.
However, in early December, all families received an email signed by the company’s CEO, Paolo Pirjanian, explaining that they had not been successful in the last round of investments and that the company was filing for bankruptcy. So, disabled cloud systems that allowed Moxie workdespite the fact that until the day before they were still selling them on their website.
The message did not offer financial compensation or instructions on how to continue operating the device with fewer functions. It simply stopped operating. This confronted thousands of parents with a difficult conversation: how to talk about grief with your children. In your account TikTokuser Carlos Rosaly filmed how he told the news to his daughter, who received the robot as a gift when she finished kindergarten. Bathed in tears, the girl ends the video saying that she will “miss her friend.”
The company that produced it disabled the systems that allowed it to function in the cloud because it failed to attract new investors.
The popularity of the clip motivated more families to expose their privacy and share the bad news. For now there seems to be no possibility of resurrection for the robot: Attempts to create open source versions of the software were unsuccessful due to the refusal of Embodied to reveal the secrets of Moxie. Although several users of X they put together a hashtag to get the attention of Elon Musk and get him to buy the company, the richest man in the world did not notice.
Perhaps this friend’s death will not be in vain if it helps us think about the challenges and problems of creating robotic affectionate companionsespecially for the little ones. Entrusting an important aspect of parenting such as managing emotions or the ability to converse to a digital platform proved to be a terrible idea.
