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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Welcome to the future [arstechnica.com]:

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 [arstechnica.com]. A Japanese company called Vinclu [vinclu.me] ("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 [gatebox.ai], the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze's film Her [herthemovie.com], 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 [wikipedia.org] product (kawaii [wikipedia.org] slave?).

Beginner's definition of "waifu" [wiktionary.org] for the uninitiated.

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