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Children in the US will likely say goodbye to an AI-powered friend named Moxie. The small dog-sized companion bot, which used a large ChatGPT-style language model and expressive features to have open conversations with children, will soon be taken offline due to its creator’s financial troubles.
The decision to discontinue the $799 product four years after its release first reported by Aftermathhas left some customers lamenting the loss of an artificial friend, while others angrily demanded refunds. Videos of confused, crying children saying goodbye to their companion are flooding social media. But Moxie’s sudden death isn’t entirely unique. It’s part of a larger trend of companies dropping software support for hardware to cut costs. In an economy where products are increasingly rented servicespowerful devices can turn into worthless scrap overnight.
Moxie used an AI model to talk to children about their lives
Moxie was released in 2020 by technology company Embody. The robot, intended for use by children between 5 and 10 years old, is 45 centimeters tall and has a human-like animated face that can display a range of human-like emotions. It can play games like Simon Says and tell jokes and brainteasers, but it is also used by many to have meandering conversations. The robot reportedly uses speech recognition to listen to the speaker, facial recognition to analyze the speaker’s emotions and a large language model to conduct conversations.
That last part requires a constant connection to a cloud-based AI system to work. Embodied released a statement last week announcing that it would cease operations due to “financial challenges.” Without the company paying for Moxie’s AI capabilities, its core functionality will go offline. For users who have become dependent on regular communication with the robot, it will seem as if their closest companion has essentially died or simply no longer exists.
‘I am grateful for all the nice conversations we had together’
Parents and other Moxie owners got to work on it social media following the news to share videos of people saying what their final farewell to the machine could be. Several of those videos can be seen crying children while their parents try to explain to them why their companion no longer wants to talk to them.
@shadow_spidey Hoping that @moxierobot can find new financial support #moxie #moxierobot #parentsoftiktok #heartache #heartbreaking #sayinggoodbye #sadnews #longervideos #fyp ♬ Very sad – Enchan
“If they reject you, should I just leave you on my shelf?” a Moxie owner named Heather asked the robot on TikTok.
“I think it would be nice to keep me on your board, so I’m always close by, so we can keep chatting and have fun together,” Moxie responds.
After a pause, Moxie’s owner tells the robot, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Moxie says with an abrupt smile. “Heather, your kinship and friendship mean a lot to me, I am grateful for all the nice conversations we have had together. Is there a special moment or memory you would like to share with me before we say goodbye?”
@heatherfraziertiktok This could be my last conversation with moxie. I got an email saying it’s closing forever. I’ll be talking about moxie in a business insider article soon! This robot had so much potential. Sad. #moxie #moxierobot #moxierobotforchildren #moxierip #moximentor @Embodied, Inc. ♬ original sound – Heather Frazier
In a final Close FAQ Embody said it was “exploring options to keep Moxie operational for as long as possible,” but noted that the service would likely end in the coming days. The company said it is also exploring ways in which another company could essentially adopt Moxie, although it acknowledged that “the outcome is uncertain.” When reached for comment, an Embody spokesperson provided guidance Popular science to this LinkedIn post written by CEO Paolo Pirjanian. Pirjanian said the “catastrophic” setback was the result of a key investor failing to provide the necessary financing at the last minute.
“We cannot emphasize enough our regret that the circumstances led to this,” Pirjanian said. “We had every reason to believe that a critical round of funding would be completed, allowing us to continue improving Moxie, scale operations and ultimately help even more children in need of emotional support and learning opportunities.”
In the days following the announcement, Pirjanian said members of the Moxi community have made their own suggestions to keep the service running. Some parents have proposed higher subscription prices “far above” anything Embody had considered implementing. Others have suggested that Moxie’s underlying technology should be open source, and some have even suggested acquiring the company outright.
“Our paths forward have been disrupted in ways we never imagined, and we realize many of you are caught up in the consequences,” the CEO added.
Hardware is increasingly dependent on software support for core functionality
Moxie’s crippling closure is just the latest example of companies abruptly ending support for robots and other hardware that customers have begun to integrate into their daily lives. In September, Amazon announced it was discontinuing service for its 20-pound wheeled “Astro” robot just eight months after it was first released. The 20 pound robot would autonomously walk around a user’s home “Patrol” the area with a camera and an integrated Amazon Echo smart display. Now it’s nothing more than a big pile of high-tech scrap. Amazon told customers, it would refund the bot $2,349.99 and provide a credit of $300.
That move came months after Spotify controversially dropped support for its CarThing, a 4.5-inch device that users could attach to their cars to access the music streaming platform. Although it was a niche product, it was praised by many users with older vehicles that did not have modern infotainment systems such as Apple or Google Carplay. Spotify had reportedly initially said it would continue to support the device But finally stopped its operation this week. Frustrated users has filed a class action lawsuit against Spotify Earlier this year, Spotify claimed to have misled customers by selling them a product that would soon be obsolete. That suit has now voluntarily dismissed.
Each of these cases is the result of a much broader shift where consumers effectively no longer fully own their own products. Robots, fitness trackers, exercise equipmentand other hardware once considered “products” are increasingly services. In this relationship, companies essentially lease hardware to customers in exchange for regular subscription services that grant access to the core software. This is especially true for AI-integrated products like Moxie, which rely on data centers to power core functionality. Every time a question is asked to Moxie or even OpenAI’s ChatGPT, calculations take place that cost the company running the product money to run. These costs are often passed on to the consumer in the form of a subscription.
All of this may seem to work relatively well, until it doesn’t. Because customers no longer own the software on these devices, they have an obligation to companies to continue supporting the services, even when it is not in their own financial interest. That can lead to worrying results, especially as healthcare technology and other higher-stakes products follow this mode. In one such case, a woman suffering from chronic epilepsy had to undergo a experimental brain-computer interface implanted in her brain surgically removed after the company behind it ran out of financing. The device had reportedly reduced her seizures from three per month to none.
“The company was responsible for creating a new person,” says a group of ethicists argued in the news Brain stimulation. “Once the device was explanted, that person was terminated.”
Concerned consumer advocates are urging regulators to do more to prevent scenarios like this from happening in the future. Earlier this year, a group of activists, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, iFixit and the Center for Economic Justice, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is calling on the agency to investigate so-called “software tethering,” which broadly refers to the practice of tying the usability of hardware to external software. The groups argue that companies should guarantee minimum support times for hardware products to prevent users from suddenly being saddled with useful technology. They also said companies should guarantee customers that their product’s functionality will still work even if the internet connection goes down. But that would likely prove difficult, if not impossible, to implement with AI-based devices like Moxie that need to connect to servers to process queries.
“While the FTC has taken some limited action on this issue, a lack of clarity and enforcement has created an ecosystem where consumers cannot reliably count on the longevity of the connected products they purchase,” the groups wrote in their letter.
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