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

Summary

I’ve often joked that I would love to have a pet if only animals did not need to poop and eat smelly, wet mush from a can. I want a fuzzy pal to hang out with all day, but then I’ll hear that my friend spent $500 at the vet because their cat nibbled on a leaf, and the illusion breaks. It’s hard enough to take care of myself – do I really want to be responsible for a creature who might wake me up at 4 AM to pee? So when Casio offered me a review unit of its new AI-enabled pet, the Moflin, I said yes. It seemed cute, and it fit my criteria of being incapable of producing excrement… but also, I am all too willing to sacrifice myself for content, so I figured that if this seemingly innocent robot tried to kill me in my sleep, then at least I’d get a good article out of it. Image Credits:TechCrunch When my ginger-haired puff ball of a Moflin arrived in its box, I had two blaring questions: Is anyone going to spend $430 on what’s basically 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 U.S., the NSA banned Furbies from its offices over fears that it would parrot classified discussions – and Furbies were only $35! Casio says that the Moflin doesn’t understand or record what I say, but it converts what it hears into non-identifiable data so that 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 fully let my guard down – this little furball may not be spying on me now, but what if that changes in the future? (My own anxieties aside, we don’t currently have any evidence of a hidden surveillance plot beneath my Moflin’s fluffy exterior, to be clear.) Image Credits:MofLife app, screenshots by TechCrunch The Moflin is supposed to use AI to learn and respond to my interactions over time. According to Casio’s website, the Moflin is supposed to have limited emotions a...