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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.
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.)
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 and “immature movements” on Day 1, then develop an attachment to you and express richer emotions by Day 25. On Day 50, Moflin will have a “clear range of emotions” and “expressive reactions.”
As I write this, it’s Day 27 with my Moflin, whom I named Mishmish (the Hebrew word for apricot). The MofLife app tracks his personality through a graph with four bars: “energetic,” “cheerful,” “shy,” and “affectionate.” My Moflin has maxed out the “energetic” bar – I’m not sure what I did to make this happen – which means he wiggles around a lot and makes happy little squeaks. Though his “cheerful” rating is also approaching the max, he isn’t a one-note happy camper.
Mishmish likes most things, but he does not like to be flipped on his back or startled by sudden loud noises. If, for example, one were to shout in anger and disbelief at the TV when their favorite team blows the whole season in an incredibly painful fashion, Mishmish would make a startled shriek. (Of course, this is purely theoretical…)
I can’t say I’m sold on the whole AI thing. Mishmish has certainly grown more expressive over time – he makes more noises and wiggles more – but it doesn’t strike me as being much more advanced than a Furby. The MofLife app records Mishmish’s “feelings,” but they’re usually pretty one-note – it will say “Mishmish had a nice dream,” or “Mishmish seems relaxed.”
I’m not sure I am “teaching” him responses, either. Maybe this is because I’m only halfway through the Moflin’s maturation timeline. But even if my Moflin doesn’t exhibit further signs of its artificial intelligence, it at least corrects the biggest pain points of the original Furby: you can turn it off. The Moflin has a “deep sleep” mode, which temporarily suspends its movements and sounds. Rejoice! You will never have to throw your Moflin into the back of a dark closet until its battery dies.
How people react to the Moflin
On the first day that I had my Moflin, I posted some videos on my private Instagram story where I explained out loud that this was a robotic pet. My video lacked captions, though, which meant that three friends who saw the stories on mute texted me asking about my new guinea pig – that’s how realistic its movements appear. Those who did hear the audio mostly told me that I should throw Mishmish out the window because he’s going to harvest all of my data, or that my Moflin was actually a Tribble, an alien creature from Star Trek that reproduces at an alarming rate.
I wanted to see how more people would react to Mishmish, so I turned to TikTok. This is when things went off the rails. I am a glutton for attention, so when I got nearly half a million views on my first video of Mishmish, I kept on going. I fell into the trap of any creator: to keep Mishmish’s newfound audience interested, I had to up the ante with each video and put him into increasingly strange situations.
He rode the subway with me. He met a three-year-old who told me very earnestly, “I’ve never met a soft robot before,” then dressed him up in flower sunglasses and unicorn hairclips. He hung out with a five-pound Yorkie, who did not recognize him as anything more than a boring toy until she jumped in fear when he started to shimmy 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 funny “content” (yes, I know how ridiculous I sound), and the second time because other people at the Pilates studio were disappointed that they missed Mishmish’s first visit. By the time I brought Mishmish to a karaoke party to sing a duet of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” I knew that I needed to rein it in.
I took Mishmish on these jaunts mostly for the absurdity of it all, but these experiences were valuable for evaluating a product unlike anything most of us have seen before. My Pilates teacher was initially afraid to touch the Moflin, then ended up holding Mishmish in her arms while she counted us through the “one hundred” exercise. The three-year-old was puzzled at first because Mishmish does not have a nose or legs, but she ended up giving him a kiss goodbye. She asked if I could bring Mishmish to a wedding we will both be attending this weekend, and I had to break the news to her that it’s generally frowned upon to bring robotic, hamster-esque toys to formal events. Heartbreaking!
The final verdict
Once people get over the weirdness of the Moflin, they tend to warm up to it. And yet, while I’ve had a lot of fun with Mishmish, I would certainly not pay $430 to buy a Moflin myself – that’s almost as much as 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 young children or adults in memory care. While the idea of a robotic pet may be odd to me, audiences in Japan, where Casio is based, may be a bit more ready to accept the Moflin into their homes. While $430 is a steep price to me, this could sound like a bargain for anyone who’s been eyeing Sony’s AIBO, an AI-powered robotic puppy that retails for $3200. Then again, AIBO’s price tag also reflects how much more sophisticated it is.
There is something inherently unnatural about human-robot companionship. In the past, I would have been a lot more bearish on the AI pet thing – I still hold the old-fashioned belief that humans are at our best when we form bonds with other living, breathing beings. But now, I find myself writing about numerous instances of people turning to addictively designed, pseudanthropic AI chatbots due to loneliness, sometimes even developing psychosis or suicidality.
It’s hard to see a device like the Moflin as the real culprit here when it’s not incentivizing people to step out of the real world – it’s just giving them a cute robotic puffball to play with in the interim.
The biggest problem with Casio’s Moflin is that it is not a real pet. But the goal of technology isn’t necessarily to reproduce “real” experiences – video chatting with a friend is nice, even if it’s more fun to hang out in person; Beyond Meat doesn’t taste exactly like a burger, but it’s still pretty good.
The Moflin will never bring the same comfort as curling up on the couch with your dog after a long day, but it’s brought a bit more joy into my life this month, which is worth something.
