- Sharp’s upcoming AI companion Poketomo is a palm-sized, meerkat-shaped robotic with a glowing stomach
- Poketomo is designed to offer emotional assist, particularly for ladies of their 20s and 30s
- It combines cute design with conversational AI and syncs with a smartphone app to take care of a steady relationship
Japanese client tech model Sharp thinks it has an answer to loneliness amongst girls of their 20s and 30s: an AI-powered meerkat named Poketomo, that glows when it’s blissful and remembers your favourite café.
Poketomo is about to reach this winter (suppose November or December), offering a pocket-sized companion lower than 5 inches tall and constructed to speak with you about your day, and bear in mind your shared experiences because of Sharp’s proprietary AI mannequin.
The stomach glows in pastel tones when it’s excited or comforted. Its head tilts barely when it’s considering. It incorporates a set of fundamental physique actions, all designed to convey emotion. Nevertheless, the center of Poketomo lies within the AI mannequin constructed into the robotic for quick responses and makes use of the cloud for extra nuanced emotional understanding.
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This isn’t the primary time a tech firm has created a cutesy, non-threatening AI assistant designed to fill social house with out being intrusive. However Poketomo is perhaps probably the most deliberate and fully-realized model of that technique. You don’t work together with it via a display or keyboard. You carry it like an adjunct. You discuss to it like a pal. It listens, it learns, and it remembers you. It’s designed to be emotionally accessible and bodily lovely.
ポケとも プロモーションビデオ（2025/8） – YouTube
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Sharp is leaning onerous into the idea of “empathic AI.” Poketomo can supposedly sense emotional cues and use that to provoke conversations based mostly in your temper or current habits. It’s programmed to supply phrases of encouragement and assist, after which glow softly to let you already know it’s blissful you shared one thing.
Whenever you don’t have the bodily gadget on you, the Poketomo app syncs recollections and persona information with the gadget, so conversations with one carry over to the opposite. Sharp says you possibly can construct your relationship fully with the app should you desire, however the bodily model is healthier, and it is what Sharp is betting folks will carry, pose with, and kind a bond round.
AI companionship
Regardless of seeming like a baby’s toy, Sharp says Poketomo was designed for younger grownup girls. There is a promotional manga sequence cementing that truth. It facilities round a girl named Nanami in her late 20s, dwelling alone, navigating work and life stress, and discovering small moments of pleasure in conversations together with her Poketomo. Even the promotional photographs principally present a younger lady with a Poketomo clipped to a classy purse, smiling whereas it talks to her.
(Picture credit score: Sharp)
The query is whether or not this type of stylized emotional heat will really make folks really feel higher about their lives. Will they really feel much less lonely due to somewhat robotic with some subtle response triggers?
To be honest, it doesn’t attempt to be human, tricking folks subconsciously into believing they’re speaking to an actual human, but it surely would possibly make some uncomfortable. And if one of the best new concept in client AI is “make it fuzzy and let it ask how your day was,” what does that say in regards to the limits of the tech? I do not suppose Poketomo would be the remedy for loneliness, but it surely would possibly jumpstart a development of digital pets in a position to mimic with emotional depth.
