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posted by janrinok on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-money-than-sense dept.

Welcome to the future:

The future is apparently here. And it's creepier than we ever imagined—even when we were playing around with tethering Teddy Ruxpin to the Internet. A Japanese company called Vinclu ("a company that makes crazy things and supports crazy people") is now taking pre-orders from Japan and the United States for a new interactive, artificial-intelligence driven home automation system. Called Gatebox, the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze's film Her , and the "holographic" anime characters of Vocaloid concerts to their unified natural conclusion.

Wait, what?

Gatebox, priced at ¥321,840 (about $2,700 US), is squarely targeted at young lonely salarymen and all brands of anime-obsessed otaku—promising the experience of "living with your favorite character." The size of a home coffee-maker, with a footprint no larger than a sheet of A4 printer paper, the device's main feature is a clear projection tube that displays a computer-animated avatar for the AI's "character." Vinclu apparently is planning multiple possible personalities for Gatebox—which, as part of the device's backstory, is a gateway to the dimension the character lives in.

A company like this could release the first strong AI product (kawaii slave?).

Beginner's definition of "waifu" for the uninitiated.

Update: Another article indicates that "[There's also] HDMI and PC inputs to allow the owner to make their own modifications and create their own characters."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:36PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:36PM (#443953) Homepage Journal

    Maybe not creepy - it doesn't go anywhere near the uncanny valley, after all. But it is pretty sad that some people are glad to have a gadget call them "darling" and tell them it missed them while they were at work. From the demo, I don't have the impression that the dialog is terribly clever; really not much more than an enhanced Eliza, with the addition of responding to specific commands. It will almost certainly get repetitive after the first week.

    The whole situation reminds me of the old Simon and Garfunkle song [youtube.com] that goes, in part:

       Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
       I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome
       I took some comfort there

    There are people lonely enough that they need this. It's still a sad commentary on modern (particularly urben) life...

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    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:57PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:57PM (#443965) Journal

    They want more (they would prefer strong AI), but they would settle for far less (preprogrammed/cloud bullshit). As long as it doesn't mean rejection (real life partners).

    Although, if you had a strong AI, you would figure it could reject someone unless it had enforced friendliness (an active area of "research"). Maybe old school brainwashing is the key.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @03:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @03:29AM (#444185)

    Is that it is far easier to buy yourself a friend than it is to acquire one through social interaction for many people. (I did not use the term 'make a friend', because in this context, that would be building your own robot to house your Waifu's personality.)

    Society in many parts of the world is not conducive to everyone finding themselves a partner. Maybe some don't want it but many do, and without that, or social interaction, or social services to take care of them (either humanely, or inhumanely.) many people just end up falling through the cracks and dying along in their own shit and piss in their tiny little apartment somewhere. Assuming of course they aren't homeless and end up as just another John Doe passing through the morgue, or local trench graves.