The CEO of a company that makes $1,200 AI-powered robots for autistic children says he has no current options to keep his company afloat though is “exploring all avenues”. Customers were told the US-based robotics company Embodied would soon shut down and the robots would stop working.
In 2020, Embodied launched Moxie, a US$799 (A$1,250) human robot that uses AI to interact with people with features like telling jokes, spinning stories and sharing affirmations.
It was targeted at children — in particular children with autism — but has also found adult fans. Embodied sold it by claiming that interacting with Moxie and building a relationship could help improve emotional regulation, communication and social skills.
“[Moxie is] a supportive robot friend for kids that loves learning about their interests and hearing about their day,” the website says.
But after users on Reddit and TikTok started to notice their robots were increasingly not functioning, the company acknowledged in an email to customers in late November that it was closing down, as was first reported by gaming outlet Aftermath.
“A critical funding round fell through, leaving us unable to sustain operations,” according to a FAQ posted on the website.
The company’s impending closure means that all Moxie devices, which depend on cloud-based AI services to power their interactivity, will soon be useless. Without the company running the servers, the Moxie becomes an expensive paperweight. The company said it would not be offering refunds due to its financial issues.
Moxie owners are unhappy about the imminent death of a device that they or their children had grown close to. Comments on the unofficial Moxie subreddit r/MoxieRobot ranged from concerns for customers who had just recently bought the device to dread about managing the fallout. “My autistic child is devastated and I’m pissed,” said one user.
Chris Littleking is an Australian who runs the amateur robotics forum “Robots Around the House” and owns two Moxie robots.
He bought them in 2023 because Moxie’s “eye contact, vivid face animations and ability to give lots of non-verbal communication by adjusting its body posture separate it from anything else currently available”, he said in a message to Crikey. The company’s sudden decision to shut Moxies down shocked Littleking who was looking forward to promised upcoming features.
Annabel Blake is a researcher at the University of Sydney who is examining the relationship between child and conversational AI, like the technology underpinning Moxie’s abilities. Blake said that the sudden removal of a product like Moxie can be a traumatic experience for children who’ve grown accustomed to it.
“Something that parents aren’t aware of is that social machines can cease working for a variety of reasons — they can malfunction, run out of battery, or [encounter] financial disruptions. And if the child’s developed routine interactions or dependence, then that sudden disruption is where we’re going to see these negative experiences,” Blake said.
According to Blake, the relationship between children and conversational AI is a nascent field of research given the infancy of this technology, but there are already ideas about how companies can avoid situations like abruptly removing a trusted device like Moxie.
One suggestion is using the opportunity to carefully introduce children to the idea of loss, they said. Embodied had provided a letter to help parents have this conversation with their children, but according to Blake, the letter — which told children that Moxie had lost funding — didn’t resonate with some parents. Blake said this could have been done better.
“There is a growth opportunity here, and things like this are a huge part of human life, so maybe there is a role for transitory objects and attachments with these robots, but have that as part of the product experience,” they said.
Blake also mentioned that manufacturers should plan for this when creating their products and not when things go bottom up. They raised the idea of a “right to reanimate”, which would require companies to make sure products could continue to be used with other conversational AI software (similar to a right to repair).
On Tuesday, US time, Embodied CEO Paolo Pirjanian made his first public statement on Moxie’s decommissioning. “We cannot overstate our regret that circumstances had come to this,” he posted on LinkedIn. “We acknowledge how frightening it must feel to think that your investment in Moxie could be lost.”
Pirjanian’s statement left open the possibility of finding new financial backers or being acquired, but did not suggest either was likely. He also acknowledged the idea of open-sourcing Moxie — meaning giving access to its software to anyone so that third parties could potentially reanimate the robot — but downplayed its likelihood.
“We are not dismissing the idea, but this would be a complex undertaking, tied up in legal, technical and contractual knots,” he said.
Littleking isn’t optimistic about its chances. “I feel it’s just an unfortunate reality that companion robots are incredibly hard products to be successful with,” he said.
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