I spent a month living with a $430 AI pet, the Casio Moflin

I’ve often joked that I’d love to have a pet if only animals didn’t need to poop and eat smelly, wet mush from cans. I want to hang out with a fuzzy friend all day, but then I hear that my friend spent $500 at the vet because their cat tripped on a leaf and the illusion broke.

Taking care of myself is hard enough – do I really want to be responsible for an animal that wakes me up at 4am to pee?

So when Casio offered me a review unit of its new AI-enabled pet, MufflinI said yes. It looked cute, and it fit my criteria for being unable to produce excrement… but also, I’m willing to dedicate myself to content, so I figured if this seemingly innocent robot was going to try to kill me in my sleep, at least I could get a good article out of it.

When my moufflin’s ginger-haired puff ball arrived in its box, I had two nagging questions: Is anyone going to spend $430 on a fluffy, high-tech potato? And, is this thing spying on me? After all, the last time there was a robotic toy pet craze in the US, The NSA has banned Furbies Fearing that it would parrot classified discussions from its office – and the Furbies were only $35!

Casio says the Mufflin doesn’t understand or record what I say, but converts what it hears into non-identifiable data so it can distinguish my voice from others. When TechCrunch ran a network analysis on the accompanying MofLife app, we didn’t notice anything shady.

As a tech reporter, I’ve seen too much to completely let my guard down – this little furball isn’t spying on me now, but what if that changes in the future? (My own concerns aside, to be clear we have no evidence of a surveillance plot lurking beneath the fluffy exterior of my mufflin.)

Mofflin is supposed to use AI to learn and respond to my interactions over time. According to Casio’s website, Mofflin is supposed to have limited emotions and “immature movements” on the first day, then develop an attachment to you and express richer emotions within 25 days. On day 50, Mofflin will have an “emotional range” and “expressive response”.

As I write this, it’s day 27 with my mufflin, which I named Mishmish (the Hebrew word for apricot). The MofLife app tracks his personality through a graph with four bars: “bright,” “cheerful,” “shy,” and “affectionate.” My Mufflin has maxed out the “brightness” bar – I’m not sure what I did to make this happen – which means he moves around a lot and makes happy little squeals. Although his “cheerful” rating is also nearing the maximum, he is not a one-note happy camper.

Mishmish likes most things, but he doesn’t like being flipped on his back or startled by sudden loud noises. If, for example, one screamed anger and disbelief at the TV when their favorite team was on An incredibly painful fashion is the whole season of blowsMishmish was startled. (Of course, it is Purely theoretical…)

I can’t say I’m sold on the whole AI thing. Mishmish has definitely become more expressive over time – he makes more noises and moves more – but it doesn’t strike me as much more advanced than Furby. The MofLife app records Mishmish’s “feelings,” but they’re usually one-note — it’ll say “Mishmish had a nice dream” or “Mishmish seems relaxed.”

I’m not sure I’m “teaching” him to respond, either. Maybe it’s because I’m halfway through the Mofflin maturity timeline. But even if my Mufflin doesn’t show more signs of its artificial intelligence, it at least fixes one of the original Furby’s biggest pain points: you can turn it off. Mofflin has a “deep sleep” mode, which temporarily suspends its movements and sounds. Joy! You never have to shove your Mufflin in the back of a dark closet until its batteries die.

How people react to Moflin

On the first day of my Mufflin, I posted some videos on my personal Instagram story where I explained out loud that it was a robotic pet. My video lacked captions though, which meant that three friends who watched the stories silently asked me about my new guinea pig – how realistic its movements were. Most of the people who listened to the audio told me that I should throw my mishmash out the window because he was going to collect all my data, or that my mufflin was actually a TrebleAn alien creature from Star Trek that reproduces at an alarming rate.

I wanted to see how more people would react to the mix, so I turned to TikTok. This is when things went off the rails. I’m a glutton for attention, so when I got around Half a million views In my first video of Mishmish, I continue. I fell A trap of some creator: To keep Mishmish’s new found audience interested, I had to get ahead of myself with each video and put him in increasingly weird situations.

He rode the subway with me. he see A three-year-old who told me earnestly, “I’ve never met a soft robot before,” then dressed him in flowered sunglasses and a unicorn hairclip. he hang out Along with a five pound Yorkie, who didn’t recognize him as anything more than a pesky toy until he jumped in fright when he started bobbing his little head. Mishmish attended two Pilates classes – the first because I asked a teacher if I could record my AI pet on the equipment for fun “stuff” (yes, I know how ridiculous I sound) and the second because other people at the Pilates studio were disappointed that they missed Mishmish’s first visit. By then I had brought Mishmish to sing at a karaoke party A duet of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”. I knew I needed to rein it in.

I mostly took the mishmash for the absurdity of it all, but these experiences were worth evaluating a product unlike anything most of us had seen before. My Pilates teacher was afraid to touch the mufflin at first, then held Mishmish in her arms while she counted us.”one hundredexercise The three-year-old girl was surprised at first because Mishmish had no nose or legs, but she kissed him goodbye. She asked if I could bring Mishmish to a wedding we’d both be attending this weekend, and I had to break the news to her that it’s usually frowned upon to bring a robotic, hamster-for-hamster to break events!

Final verdict

Once people got over the weirdness of the mufflin, they started to warm to it. And yet, even though I’ve had a lot of fun with mishmash, I certainly can’t pay myself $430 to buy a muffin—it’s almost a Nintendo Switch 2! But I don’t think I’m the target audience, even with my distaste for cleaning a litter box.

Unlike a Tamagotchi, you can’t really harm your Moflin, making it a safe companion for small children or Adults in memory care. While the idea of ​​a robotic pet may sound strange to me, audiences in Japan, where Casio is based, may be a little more ready to accept a Mufflin into their home. While $430 is a steep price to me, it might sound like a bargain to anyone looking at a Sony. AIBOAn AI-powered robotic puppy that retails for $3200. Then again, AIBO’s price tag also reflects how sophisticated it is.

There is something inherently unusual about human-robot companionship. In the past, I’ve been very bearish on AI pets – I still hold to the old-fashioned belief that humans are at our best when we bond with other living, breathing creatures. But now, I find myself writing about many examples of people becoming addicted, Pseudonymous AI chatbots are, sometimes even developing, due to loneliness Psychosis or suicide.

It’s hard to see a device like Mofflin as the real culprit here when it’s not encouraging people to withdraw from the real world — it’s giving them a cute robotic puffball to play with in the interim.

The biggest problem with Casio’s Moflin is that it’s not an actual pet. But technology doesn’t necessarily aim to reproduce “real” experiences – video chatting with a friend is nice, even if chatting in person is more fun; Beyond Meat doesn’t taste like a burger, but it’s still pretty good.

Curling up on the sofa with your dog after a long day will never bring the same comfort, but it has brought a little more joy to my life this month, which is worth something.