Living.AI, the creators of the EMO desktop pet are heavily advertising a new personal robot called AIBI on Facebook and elsewhere, but mostly on Facebook, so people that do not like that platform are mostly out of the loop.
Aside from that they are very tight-lipped about what Aibi actually can do. So far videos shown are CGI only, there is a single production image of the actual robot. You can use it in a rotational stand or you can carry it around like a pendant. I cannot move, only rotate in that stand.
But what it actually can do was not presented so far, only very inconclusive information and no detail on the capabilities, if it has to be tethered to a phone or if it is reliant on cloud services and if so, how.
What is the real letdown for me: They want customers to preorder before they unveil what the thing actually can do. That was actually written exactly like this by a company representative, see image. So it looks like there will be no actual video of a working product and there also will be no detailed information oin what it can do, backed up by video proof and still Living.AI wants you to preorder. I would at least expect to see a working prototype before I shove out my money.
I find this behaviour unacceptable and will not preorder one. Also because it is very likely that you will have to wait months to get it after preorder, and after all the negative experiences with toy robot companies in the past (and I am not only talking about Digital Dream Labs Vector 2.0) I am no longer willing to do that.
Also I am expecting DDL’s head honcho Jacob Hanchar to pull another copyright troll stunt on Living.AI, because the new robot has green eyes. He already sued them about EMO and he also sued KEYiTech about Loona. But maybe he no longer has the funds to pay lawyers.
Update [20231214-1120]: And soon after I post this a video is posted on the Facebook page, showing Aibi singing. Still not good enough, though, still no tech specs, no details on functions or software.
Promo images copyright Living.AI