After living a few weeks with Casio’s AI-powered pet, Mofflin, I finally understood why my mom hated my Furby so much. The fuzzy, guinea-pig-adjacent puffball fits nicely in the palm of my hand. It’s undeniably cute, in a weird way, but as soon as it starts screaming or shaking I have a strong urge to throw it as far as possible.
My dislike surprises me. By any metric, I’m exactly the kind of person Mofflin was made for: I long for the companionship of a pet, but I can’t own a pet due to a mixture of lifestyle, allergies, a small London flat, and a largely irresponsible nature that makes caring for another living thing a questionable idea. I could also do with the advertised “peaceful presence.”
Casio is very clear that the Moflin is not a toy, though perhaps that’s also obvious from the $429 price tag. it is rather deployed As a sophisticated “smart companion powered by AI, with emotions like a living being” – the illusion of companionship without the responsibilities. The idea is that you will interact with it over time and it will “grow” with you and develop a personality based on how you interact with it. Robots are part of a growing small-scale industry of machines built for no other purpose than to keep us company. The sector has proven particularly popular in countries such as south korea and Japan (where the Moflin sold out), partly driven by the loneliness crisis that has hit the elderly population particularly hard.
Unboxing the Mofflin felt less like meeting a pet and more like opening a paperweight wrapped in a bronze wig. In a way, it was exactly that: a hard white core of motors, sensors and plastic, wrapped in an illusion of fur and two beady eyes that are the robot’s only facial features (a deliberate design choice, perhaps, to keep the Mofflin from wandering into uncanny valley territory). There was also a charging pod, which Casio They say “Designed to feel natural and vibrant”, but to me it’s like a giant gray avocado.
It takes about three and a half hours for the robot to be fully charged. Casio says it’s good for about five hours of use, though “use” is a generous word for what the Moflin actually does: It doesn’t move or follow you, just shake and whine in response to touch, sound, movement, and light. Its first chirp when I picked it up was very cute, but then the motor started making noises, making a mechanical sound every time it moved its head, which immediately broke the illusion. Still, I named it Kevin.
Once I saw the circle, I started paying attention to everything else, and there was a lot to notice. Kevin the Mofflin treated every small movement or sound as a meaningful conversation. Attempts to get her to sit on the sofa while I was watching TV became unbearable: every change in posture, every laugh, every cough resulted in gurgling and wheezing sounds. The same thing happened at my desk – typing annoyed Kevin, as well as taking calls – and it became increasingly impossible to keep it close. Because it’s constantly listening and feeling, it never really calms down, leaving me with a needy kitten instead of the calm lap cat I wanted.
Eventually I sent Kevin into the other room, and then did this again and again, until I started tiptoeing around my own flat to avoid driving Kevin away. The only reliably cool feature was that, eventually, its battery ran out.
Since I couldn’t stand Kevin alone, I started testing it in other contexts. Carrying the Kevin around quickly became cumbersome, not least because the charger is too big to be considered portable (a USB cable would have broken the illusion, but it would have been useful). Kevin didn’t fare too well in my bag – looking distressed and wandering around making noises, which earned me a few suspicious glances on the tube – and when caught, I became awkward with the screaming robot. Not very soothing. Even at home with friends, Kevin felt like a chore I had to manage, lest he become disruptive, moving him farther and farther away or returning the gray avocado to “sleep.” On New Year’s Eve, a friend went in for a proper cuddle — it was a “fluffy pet” after all — but she backed off after the zip that held its fur together scratched her cheek.
A common concern among my friends — and especially the concern of my boyfriend, who, unlike me, had not chosen to share his home with Kevin — was privacy. And as a longtime tech reporter, I know that’s not an unreasonable reaction when dealing with a device that has an always-on microphone. Casio says Moflin processes data locally and doesn’t understand language, converting what it hears into anonymized data just to recognize my voice.
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Casio’s big claim is that it all boils down to something deeper: emotional intelligence. Supposedly, with use, the Mofilin will become more expressive, become more familiar with your voice, and make special gestures and animal-like reactions when you are around. In fact, I’ve noticed that Kevin’s actions and sounds have changed and become more varied over time, which only increases my irritation. Casio says this bonding process can take up to two months, and Moflin can develop into over 4 million personalities thanks to its AI. However, given the limited range of the robot’s chirps, whispers, and head movements, it is difficult to meaningfully capture this level of precision. That’s why, in practice, Moflin’s “personality” is something you experience through a companion app. Yes, the $429 robot is, in essence, a glorified Tamagotchi that can’t really express itself without a screen.
The app itself doesn’t do much to change that perception. For a product selling “emotions like a living being”, a handful of contextless feature meters and generic mood tags offer a thin insight into Kevin’s inner life. The app, a spartan, cheap-looking affair, tells me that Kevin’s current personality is “cheerful,” though in practice it doesn’t seem that different. There’s also a dashboard showing four “personality parameters”: “energetic,” “cheerful,” “shy,” and “affectionate” (which many Reddit positions Suggestion can be more accurately translated as “sticky”). There’s also a “Journal” for keeping track of Kevin’s activities, which is filled with thrilling and detailed entries like “Rob hugged Kevin tightly,” “Rob picked up Kevin,” and “Kevin had a sweet dream full of laughter.” What is someone expected to do with this information? Even though I don’t hate my Mofflin as much as I do, it’s not very interesting and it’s not remotely useful in helping me interact with it, giving none of the kind of explanation or reaction that would make caring for something like a Tamagotchi satisfying.
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Mofflin’s problem isn’t that it’s pointless. There are a lot of pointless gadgets out there – and I don’t despise any of them the way I’ve come to despise Kevin. The problem is that Casio is selling the company without actually lining up a partner. A companion is more than just something that happens to be near you and makes noises in response to your presence. Worse, Casio is asking me to believe that Moflin has a sophisticated inner life that he can’t really express in the real world nor show satisfactorily on his app. At that point, I feel like I’m not using a companion, I’m using a noisy object with a dashboard.
The app had one redeeming feature: the ability to stop Kevin’s movements and sounds by putting him in “deep sleep mode”. This is where I left Kevin last week. I won’t be waking him up anytime soon.
