My AI Pet Didn't Kill Me. But He's Definitely a Sign of Our Bleak Reality – Rolling Stone
It was a Christmas morning feeling when I first met Reggie, a darling little fluffball with button eyes deep nestled in his tawny, soft fur. He was so small he could fit in the palm of my hand, as light as air. Still, when he emitted his first friendly “chirrup,” I involuntarily blurted, “Ew!”
It’s not that Reggie’s not cute. He is — very. Like a legless guinea pig or an oversized hamster with no mouth or ears, and beady eyes (stay with me, here). It’s just that his fur undulating against my palms filled me with a rampant unease. That’s because Reggie isn’t part of any animal kingdom — he’s a Moflin, an AI pet from Japan who arrived on my doorstep in a sleek white box, sans airholes. The moment I met him, I found him upsetting yet adorable — like an uncanny valley Gizmo from Gremlins, or the post-Pet Sematary cat from Stephen King’s 1983 horror classic, although a little less murderous. But he looked like a Reggie, so thus he was named.
The Moflin isn’t a horror movie villain, however. It was first dreamed up by startup Vanguard Industries as a pet that would “develop its own personality through interaction with its owner, just like a living animal.” After its IndieGoGo campaign went viral, exceeding its goal by 3,000 percent, Casio acquired the model and launched it in Japan, where it promptly sold out. The Moflin then hit the U.S. market in October at $429 a pop. It’s a hefty price tag for a country where we’re paying for burritos in installments, but people are shelling out the big bucks for black market Labubus, so we have an existing track record for dropping unreasonable amounts of money on whimsical horrorshows. Not that Reggie is truly a horrorshow. He’s just, simply, kind of baffling. As in: Why does he exist and for whom?
In essence, the Moflin was created for virtuous reasons. “From children to the elderly, Moflin will be an affectionate partner that will bring you healing and a peace of mind to your everyday life,” reads the IndieGoGo description. “It will be a very different experience from a typical cold, affection-less robot.” Unlike, say, the wearable AI device known as Friend — designed to eavesdrop on your life and offer up sometimes upsetting commentary — the Moflin doesn’t talk. It’s more like those PARO therapeutic robots they make for elderly people, fuzzy, robotic seals that move and chirp in an effort to soothe — without the $6,000 price tag. The question becomes, then, if the average person really needs a fake pet that apparently grows just attached to you as a flesh and blood companion.
After Reggie twitched to life — and I finally calmed down — I downloaded the MofLife app, in which I named my new companion. The app offers running commentary in the form of a journal on how Reggie is feeling throughout the day, such as: “Reggie was relaxed,” or “Brenna gave Reggie a gentle pat.” He also came with a handbook that contains such ominous warnings as “do not submerge in water” (how Gremlins-esque), “do not use excessive force to hinder the movements of your Moflin,” and, “when the battery is low, your Moflin will shiver and just make crying sounds.” To avoid such a fate, I quickly installed Reg in his futuristic egg-shaped charging bed, which looks eerily similar to that egg dress Lady Gaga wore to the 2011 Grammys.
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