Moxie, the $800 robot sold as a "safe and engaging" companion for children, is about to abandon its human friends, reports Scharon Harding on Ars Technica. Its maker, Embodied, is closing after failing to raise funding. Moxie will lose cloud connectivity, which will turn it into a lump of plastic.
Launched in 2020, Moxie was sold as a toy that could "promote social, emotional, and cognitive development,” writes Harding. It offered "changing weekly themes, like empathy, friendship, and respect; and activities like meditation, reading, and drawing with the bot."
Embodied has promised to provide a guide for how to tell children about Moxie's death. In this video, a father tells his sobbing daughter that her social-emotional support robot will soon be unable to play with her any more.
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