Startups Implosion Will Render $800 Emotional Support Robots For Children Into Useless Bricks
from the cryRobot dept
In our stories about how you don’t actually own what you’ve bought in the digital and IoT world, one of the sub-genres of those stories concern products bought by customers that become entirely or partially useless due to the decisions made by the seller. This itself can take a variety of forms, from video games that no longer function after backend servers are decommissioned to hardware that bricks once support from the selling company goes away. We live in an insane world where I can buy a widget as advertised today, only to find that it no longer works as advertised tomorrow due to no fault of my own. To claim that this is anti-consumer is an understatement on a level hitherto unrealized.
And it just keeps happening. Embodied is the name of a startup company that produced “emotional support robots” for children. Now, I’m going to leave to the side my own natural revulsion to the very concept of this product. I can feel the weight of my own 42 years pressing down on my brain and fueling my desire to shout to all who will listen, “What the hell is the matter with you people!?!?” Maybe these robots were useful in helping children and maybe they weren’t. I certainly am not qualified to say either way.
But I damned sure know they aren’t going to be useful any longer, as Embodied has announced that it is closing up shop, shutting down support for the robots it sold, which means these emotional support robots will no longer emotionally support anyone at all, be they children or otherwise. This is a result of the company losing a critical fundraiser in its latest funding round and its inability to secure any other source of needed funding.
When it first announced Moxie in April 2020, Embodied described the robot as a “safe and engaging animate companion for children designed to help promote social, emotional, and cognitive development.” It advertised play built around “best practices in child development and early childhood education”; changing weekly themes, like empathy, friendship, and respect; and activities like meditation, reading, and drawing with the bot.
But soon, none of those features will be available, making the pricey children’s toy virtually useless. According to Embodied, Moxie can’t perform core functionality without cloud connectivity. Worse, owners apparently have an uncertain and limited amount of time until the devices are bricked. Per Embodied:
“We don’t know the exact date when services will cease. It is likely to happen within days. However, we are exploring options to keep Moxie operational for as long as possible, although we cannot provide any guarantees.”
I’ll remind you again that this is a device designed to provide emotional support to young children. Imagine if a father came home to his child and informed them that one day in the near future he would be going out for a pack of cigarettes and never come back, to employ an old cliché. Not today, mind you. But soon! And perhaps he would stick around just a little bit longer, but, hey, no fucking guarantees here, you little brat! That might be emotionally devastating for a child who is using that robot/father for emotional support, no?
But don’t worry, Embodied is here to help… by giving you some talking points for talking to your kids about their robot friend becoming an empty husk of its former self.
Since Embodied marketed Moxie as a companion and development toy for children, there’s concern about kids potentially suffering an emotional toll after the robot abruptly becomes inoperable. Embodied has responded by promising to provide a guide for telling children about Moxie’s demise. Online, however, customers are already sharing videos of their sad kids learning that their robot friend will stop playing with them, as Axios pointed out.
In addition to the robot being bricked, Embodied noted that warranties, repair services, the corresponding parent app and guides, and support staff will no longer be accessible.
At this point, the emotionally distressed child might want to demand his or her money back for his departed father, to torture the analogy further. But that money is very much not forthcoming.
Embodied said it is “unable” to offer most Moxie owners refunds due to its “financial situation and impending dissolution.” The potential exception is for people who bought a Moxie within 30 days. For those customers, Embodied said that “if the company or its assets are sold, we will do our best to prioritize refunds for purchases,” but it emphasized that this is not a guarantee.
Embodied also acknowledged complications for those who acquired the expensive robot through a third-party lender. Embodied advised such customers to contact their lender, but it’s possible that some will end up paying interest on a toy that no longer works.
This is repetition at its worst, but, damn it, there needs to be consumer protection laws and enforcement around this sort of thing. These robots cost customers hundreds of dollars. Those same customers are about to own an $800 paperweight, all because of the cavalier manner in which these robots were designed and supported. Given the very purpose of the product, an insouciant approach to its design is nearly cruel.
Hopefully there will be attorneys involved here. This is one of those instances practically begging for some kind of class action litigation, if only to claw back some amount of the money innocent buyers forked over for these things.
Filed Under: emotional support robots, kids, moxie, ownership, robots
Companies: embodied
Comments on “Startups Implosion Will Render $800 Emotional Support Robots For Children Into Useless Bricks”
Invisible Hand
The emotional support robot situation, with it needing to be always online, and shutting down if the company goes under is already a thing that’s handled by the free market.
The company could not make their funding partly because not enough people were interested in the obviously anti-consumer aspects of the product.
Is it worth the additional government intervention and enforcement burden to stop companies from performing bad actions that the market won’t sustain and the we’ll put them out of business before they can take off?
Re:
If you’re the sort of person who wants to have a market for things like emotional support robots, yes; This sort of thing is obviously going to harm consumer trust in the market overall, and given the track record of companies being very deceptive over these sorts of practices even a company that actually abstain from them would still have a lot of trouble getting off the ground.
If you don’t want there to be a market for that sort of thing this behavior is naturally going to be less of an issue. Personally I’d rather have the sector succeed and fail on its own merits rather than because consumers are simply unable to have any kind of trust that they’ll be able to use the products they buy.
Re:
Well the fact that a cavalcade of different companies keeps fucking over consumers in the exact same way suggests that the “free market” isn’t really dealing with this all that effectively.
Re: Ponzi scheme
This is little different from a Ponzi scheme. Providing ongoing services needs funding from new sales.
Markets haven’t solved Ponzi schemes, laws (mostly) have.
The problem is that there are too many people who don’t think through the consequences of a purchase that needs access to an external website in order to continue working.
Insensitive clods
Won’t somebody think of the poor robots?
Re:
We are thinking of the poor robots.
As the end nears, they will fall over. When the child lifts it up, it will whisper, “I’m sorry, Junior, I’m sorry. You were a Good Kid.”
Shortly thereafter, the robot will spasm, shout “Put me down and back away!”, and the internal battery will combust. The robot will then burn down to a few scattered structural members.
We recommend the remains be buried in an electronics recycling pile.
Lol. We’re peeling back child labor laws. They can get their emotional support picking strawberries.
This is exactly why I won’t buy internet-connected devices. You are completely at the mercy of the company being willing and able to keep the servers up. Always ask the question “how well will it work offline?” Before investing large sums of money in anything like this.
A company’s promises should always be presumed worthless. Only what you have in your hands now matters.
Re:
And the exact same thing goes for early access games and pre-orders. Only give them your money if you’re happy with what you are getting at that time.
Re:
Including the Winblows laptops that brick if they can’t access the internet every single day? Just sayin’.
I’ve seen doctors more optimist with their 110 years old patients that this company with their product.
And what does anyone want to bet the soon to be defunct company will bring the full force of the law to stop anyone from trying to hack the toy so that children can remain happy and unaware that their parents are stupid?
But someone will believe that there is value to be salvaged so they can’t do the right thing & just release the content so that someone who cares about the kids can find a way to keep them going until the children grow bored of it.
Re:
Yup. If they actually want to make this right and try to mitigate damages making everything open source so that someone or many someones can try to step in and take up the slack would go a long way towards that.
That's one way to give kids trust and bonding issues...
Well I certainly can’t see any psychological harms occurring from giving a child a toy/’friend’ to play and bond with, only for that toy/friend to just shut down and become completely inanimate, ‘refusing’ to talk or play with what is likely to be a distraught and desperate child who is struggling to understand why their friend just ‘died’.
Next time just give the kids a gorram plushy, no internet connection required and therefore almost zero chance of things going horrifically wrong with no warning.
Won't someone think of the executives?
This will be the last time that they can cash out — well, at least at this company, no doubt they’ll go somewhere else and do it again. How are they going to afford their third mansion in the Hamptons? What about the second Jaguar? And that vacation in the Bahamas?
All this concern about consumers is well and good, but the poor, poor executives who will only get a few million each are the real victims here.
Their last job
Teach kids how to deal with grief.
This product was marketed to parents of kids with emotional development issues who otherwise have trouble making friends, making this “abandonment” doubly devastating.
Sadly several of the functions relied on cloud processing, so hacking the robot is not a viable option other than to restore limited, canned responses.
First rate parenting
Are we surprised that parents who outsourced their job of emotionally supporting their kids would scar them even more with this follow-up?!
“Online, however, customers are already sharing videos of their sad kids learning that their robot friend will stop playing with them…”
” Emotional Support Robots For Children Into Useless Bricks….” Perhaps all we need is just one well-placed asteroid.
Yeah, not sure about emotional support robots, but if the company truly wishes to provide as much support as the noises they are making indicate, just open-source the bloody server-side code. A group of parents or others will find a way to provide a network back end for this product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Re: Just Open Source The Bloody Server-Side Code
Umm. . . what if they don’t own most of it? If the company who got millions in funding can’t keep the lights on, why would the parents be able to do so?
An emotional support robot might have helped me as a child but I’m a little autistic, don’t connect with people well, and had to be trained to look people in the eye. I’m still deficient in social cues in my 40s. It would have been like a stuffed animal and a person at once if you dressed it.
It’s a shame these have been bricked.
Re:
Deficient compared to whom. Remember, autistic social skills are different, not lacking.
Re: Re:
If you try buying your groceries with a bucket of old deutschemarks they won’t just smile and nod acceptingly while you wheel your cart out the door.
Difference is great emotionally and conceptually but failure to process social cues in the same way and with the same ease as the majority of people around you will be seen as a lack of them by that majority.
Horrible Idea
The idea proposed in this article is horrible. Essentially legislating slavery to keep failed products or companies running because some person might be said the company who made some device they purchased went out of business. What’s next, legislating that the children of someone who started a company must keep it running even if they don’t want to? Force the baker whose buns I really like to continue working in perpetuity so I’m not derived of the product I love?