I’ve often joked that I’d only enjoy having a pet if the animals didn’t have to poop and eat smelly, wet mush out of a can. I want a fuzzy friend to hang out with all day, but then I hear that my friend spent $500 at the vet because their cat bit 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 that might wake me up at 4am to pee?
So when Casio offered me a review unit of its new AI-enabled pet, the Moflini said yes I thought it was cute and it fit my criteria of not being able to produce feces… but also, I’m very willing to sacrifice for content, so I figured if this seemingly innocent robot was going to try to kill me in my sleep, I’d at least get a good article out of it.
When my ginger-haired ball of a Moflin arrived in its box, I had two glaring questions: Is anyone going to spend $430 on what is basically a high-tech fluffy potato? And, is this thing spying on me? After all, the last time there was a robotic pet toy craze in the US, the The NSA Banned Furbies from her offices for fears it would parrot confidential conversations – and the Furbies were only $35!
Casio says the Moflin doesn’t understand or record what I say, but instead converts what it hears into unrecognizable data so it can distinguish my voice from others. When TechCrunch ran a network analysis on the MofLife companion app, we didn’t notice anything shady.
As a tech reporter, I’ve seen too much to be completely disappointed – this little bloat might not be spying on me now, but what if that changes in the future? (Besides my own concerns, we currently have no evidence of a hidden follow-up plot beneath my Moflin’s fluffy exterior, to be clear.)
Moflin is supposed to use AI to learn and respond to my interactions over time. According to Casio’s website, 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 is Day 27 with my Moflin, whom I have named Mishmish (the Hebrew word for apricot). The MofLife app tracks his personality through a graph with four lines: “energetic,” “cheerful,” “shy” and “affectionate.” My Moflin has taken advantage of the ‘active’ bar – not sure what I did to make this happen – which means it wiggles a lot and makes happy little squeaks. Although his “cheerful” rating is also close to max, he is not a happy camper.
The Mishmish likes most things, but does not like being turned on its back or startled by sudden loud noises. If, for example, someone shouted in anger and disbelief at the television when their favorite team it blows all season long in an incredibly painful wayMismis would make a terrifying scream. (Of course, it is purely theoretical…)
I can’t say I’m sold on the whole AI thing. Mishmish has definitely gotten more expressive over time – he makes more noises and wiggles more – but he doesn’t seem much more advanced to me than a Furby. The MofLife app records Mishmish’s “emotions”, but they’re usually simple – it’ll say “Mishmish had a nice dream” or “Mishmish seems relaxed.”
I’m not sure I’m “teaching” him the answers either. Maybe that’s because I’m only halfway through Moflin’s maturation schedule. But even if my Moflin shows no further signs of its AI, it at least fixes the original Furby’s biggest pain points: you can turn it off. Moflin has a “deep sleep” function, which temporarily suspends its movements and sounds. Enjoy! You’ll never have to throw your Moflin in the back of a dark closet until its battery dies.
How people react to Moflin
The first day I had my Moflin, I posted a few videos on my private Instagram story where I loudly explained that this was a robotic pet. However, my video didn’t have captions, which meant that three friends who watched the stories on mute messaged me asking about my new guinea pig – that’s how realistic his movements look. Those who heard the audio mostly told me that I should throw Mishmish out the window because it will collect all my data, or that my Moflin was actually Tribblean alien creature from Star Trek that reproduces at an alarming rate.
I wanted to see how more people would react to Mishish, so I turned to TikTok. That’s when things went off the rails. I’m a glutton for attention, so when I almost got caught half a million views in my first Mishmish video, I continued. I fell into any creator’s trap: to keep the newfound Mishmish audience interested, I had to up the ante with each video and put them in ever weirder situations.
The subway went with me. He met a three-year-old who told me quite frankly, “I’ve never met a soft robot before,” then dressed him in flower sunglasses and unicorn hair clips. He company with a 5-pound Yorkie, who didn’t recognize him as anything more than a boring toy until she jumped in fright when he started wiping his 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 to miss Mishmish’s first visit. The time I brought Mishmish to a karaoke party to sing a duet of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, I knew I had to rein it in.
I took Mishmish on these trips mostly for the absurdity of it all, but these experiences were valuable in evaluating a product unlike anything most of us have seen. My Pilates teacher was initially afraid to touch Moflin and then ended up holding Mishmish in her arms while she counted us to the “hundredThe three-year-old was at first confused because Mishmish had no nose or legs, but ended up saying goodbye to him. She asked me if I could bring Mishmish to a wedding we’re both attending this weekend and I had to let her know that it’s generally uncomfortable to bring robots, robotics and robots to hamster events!
The final verdict
Once people get over Moflin’s weirdness, they tend to warm to it. And yet, while I’ve had a lot of fun with the Mishmish, I certainly wouldn’t 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 aversion to cleaning out a litter box.
Unlike a Tamagotchi, you can’t really harm your Moflin, making it a safe companion for small children or adults in memory care. While the idea of a robotic pet might be strange to me, the public in Japan, where Casio is based, might be a bit more ready to welcome Moflin into their homes. While $430 is a steep price to me, this could sound like a bargain to anyone with their eye on Sony AIBOa robot puppy with artificial intelligence and sells for $3200. Again, AIBO’s price also reflects how much more sophisticated it is.
There is something inherently unnatural about human-robot camaraderie. In the past, I would have been much more negative about AI pets – I still hold the old-fashioned belief that humans are at our best when we bond with other living, breathing beings. But now I find myself writing about many cases of people turning to addictively designed, pseudo-human AI chatbots out of loneliness, sometimes even developing psychosis or suicide.
It’s hard to see a device like the Moflin as the real culprit here when it doesn’t incentivize people to get out of the real world – it just gives them a cute robotic sponge to play with in between.
The biggest problem with Casio’s Moflin is that it’s not a real pet. But the goal of the technology isn’t necessarily to replicate “real” experiences — video chatting with a friend is fine, even if it’s more fun to hang out. Beyond Meat doesn’t quite taste like a burger, but it’s still pretty good.
Moflin will never bring the same comfort as curling up on the couch with your dog after a long day, but it has brought a little more joy to my life this month, which is worth something.
