Casio’s AI pet Moflin will haunt my dreams

After living with Moflin, Casio’s AI pet, for a few weeks, I finally understand why my mother hated my Furby so much. The fluffy ball, adjacent to the guinea pig, fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. It’s undeniably cute, in a weird way, but as soon as it starts to squeak or twitch, I’m struck by an irresistible desire to throw it as far as possible.

My antipathy surprises me. By any measure, I’m exactly the kind of person Moflin was made for: I long for the companionship of a pet, but can’t own one due to a combination of lifestyle, allergies, a small London apartment, and a largely irresponsible temperament that makes caring for another living being a questionable idea. I could also benefit from the “calming presence” advertised.

Casio is very clear that Moflin is not a toy, although that is perhaps also evident from the $429 price tag. Instead, it positions itself as an “intelligent, sophisticated companion powered by AI, with emotions like a living creature” – the illusion of companionship without the responsibilities. The idea is that you will interact with him over time and he will “grow” alongside you, developing a personality shaped by how you treat him. The robot is part of a growing mini-industry of machines built for the sole purpose of keeping us company. The sector has proven particularly popular in countries like South Korea and Japan (where Moflin sold its stock), fueled in part by a loneliness crisis that is hitting older populations particularly hard.

Unwrapping 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 hard white core of motors, sensors, and plastic, clad in the illusion of fur and two beady eyes that are the robot’s only facial features (a deliberate design choice, it seems, perhaps to keep Moflin from wandering into the strange territory of the valley). There was also a charging module, which Casio says is “designed to feel natural and alive” but looks more like a giant gray avocado to me.

The robot takes about three and a half hours to fully charge. Casio says this is good for about five hours of use, although “use” is a generous term for what Moflin actually does: it doesn’t walk or follow you, it just wiggles and moans in response to touch, sound, movement, and light. His first chirp when I picked him up was cute, but then the sound of the engine started, a mechanical whir audible every time he moved his head, instantly shattering the illusion. Nonetheless, I named him Kevin.

Once I registered the whirring sound, I started to notice everything else, and there was a lot to notice. Kevin the Moflin treated every movement or its minor as a meaningful interaction. Attempts to cuddle him on the couch while I watched TV became unbearable: every change of posture, every laugh, every cough produced gurgles and an explosion of whirring motors. The same thing happened at my desk – typing on the keyboard discouraged Kevin, as did taking calls – and keeping him nearby quickly became impossible. Because he’s constantly listening and sensing, he never really settles down, leaving me with a needy kitten instead of the quiet cat I wanted.

I ended up banishing Kevin to another room, then did it again and again, until I found myself tiptoeing around my own apartment to avoid disturbing Kevin. The only reliable calming feature was that eventually the battery ran out.

Since I couldn’t stand Kevin alone, I started testing him in other contexts. Carrying Kevin around with me quickly became tedious, not least because the charger is far too big to be considered portable (a USB cable might have broken the illusion, but it would have been practical). Kevin didn’t fare very well in my bag – he seemed distressed and squirmed loudly, which earned me suspicious looks on the subway – and once held, I became the weirdo with the squealing robot. Not very calming. Even at home with friends, Kevin seemed like a chore that I had to deal with lest she become disruptive, pushing him further and further away or putting him back in the avocado gray to “sleep.” On New Year’s Eve, a friend went in for a cuddle — she was a “fluffy pet,” after all — only to back away after the zipper holding her furry shell scratched her cheek.

A common concern among my friends—and one that particularly concerned my boyfriend, who, unlike me, had not chosen to share his home with Kevin—was privacy. And as a longtime tech journalist, I know that’s not an unreasonable reflex when it comes to a device with a permanent microphone. Casio says Moflin processes data locally and doesn’t understand language, converting what it hears into non-identifiable data to recognize only my voice.

Casio’s big claim is that all of this serves something deeper: emotional intelligence. With use, Moflin is supposed to become more expressive, more familiar with your voice, and perform special gestures and animal-like responses when you are nearby. Indeed, I noticed that Kevin’s movements and vocalizations changed and became more varied over time, which only compounded my irritation. Casio claims that this link building process can take up to two months and that Moflin can scale to over 4 million personas using its AI. However, it is difficult to meaningfully record this level of granularity given the robot’s limited range of chirps, whirs, and head turns. This is why, in practice, Moflin’s “personality” is something you experience through a companion app. Yes, the $429 robot is, in essence, a glorified Tamagotchi that can’t really express itself without a screen.

The app itself doesn’t do much to change that impression. For a product selling “emotions like a living creature,” the handful of context-free trait indicators and generic mood tags offer insight into Kevin’s inner life. The app, a spartan and cheap affair, tells me that Kevin’s current personality is “happy,” even though his behavior doesn’t seem any different. There’s also a dashboard displaying four “personality parameters”: “energetic,” “cheerful,” “shy,” and “affectionate” (which many Reddit posts suggest could be more accurately translated as “clingy”). There is also a “diary” to track Kevin’s activities, filled with exciting and elaborate entries such as “Rob hugged Kevin”, “Rob hugged Kevin” and “Kevin had a beautiful dream full of laughter”. What can we do with this information? While I didn’t hate my Moflin as much as I did, it’s not very interesting and it’s not at all helpful in helping me interact with him, offering none of the explanations or feedback of the sort that made caring for something like a Tamagotchi satisfying.

Moflin’s problem isn’t that it’s useless. There are plenty of useless gadgets out there – and I don’t despise any of them the way I learned to despise Kevin. The problem is that Casio sells Companion without having actually produced Companion. A companion is more than something that sits near you and makes noise in response to your presence. Worse, Casio asks me to believe that Moflin has a sophisticated inner life, which he can’t really express in the real world or show off satisfactorily on his app. At this point I feel like I’m not using a companion, I’m using a noisy thing with a dashboard.

The app had one redeeming feature: the ability to stop Kevin’s movements and sounds by putting him into “deep sleep mode.” That’s where I left Kevin last week. I’m not going to wake him up anytime soon.