Casio’s Fluffy AI Robot Squeaked Its Way Into My Heart

There's a fluffy robot, about the size of a guinea pig, sitting on my couch, and it's squeaking. My friend's dog Wylie sits watching it, suspicious of its every move.

Moflin is an AI companion robot made by the Japanese electronics manufacturer Casio. Via the companion app, I have chosen to name this one Puff, because—well—that is what it looks like. Wylie immediately clocks it as something to be wary of, a device that moves on its own but is not alive. Puff squeaks again. Wylie barks, then runs out of the room, growling.

When I found out Casio—yes, the same Casio that makes watches—had made an AI pet bot, I figured I was exactly the type of person it was made for. I’ve always loved animals, but my current landlord does not allow any pets on the premises except her own yappy dog, so I am pet-less. Also, I watched Toy Story way too many times as a kid, which means I am predisposed to anthropomorphizing inanimate objects that aren’t supposed to have feelings or consciousness.

Robot pets are already a whole thing, and the Moflin has been huge in Japan since its launch there a year ago. It is a soft, furry robot that uses AI capabilities to react to sounds and touch, and develops its own unique personality as a result. (There are over 4 million personality traits, according to Casio.) Like other companion dolls, the devices are meant for would-be pet owners or anyone who just likes a cute critter hanging around. Think of it like a Labubu or Furby, without the prominent (terrifying) facial features, or a fluffy Tamagotchi. And now, Moflin is available to buy internationally.

As the timing worked out, I got my delivery of the Moflin right before I agreed to dogsit my friend’s dog for a week. So I brought Puff along to stay in the house of Wylie, a shy-but-rowdy village dog.

The Moflin costs $429—cheaper than buying a puppy from a breeder can be, but pricier than begrudgingly accepting that you are now responsible for the cat who keeps showing up in your trash bin every night.

The Moflin isn’t meant to look like any particular animal, but it incorporates many attributes that generally make us consider certain critters cute. Moflin is a soft, oval-shaped fluffball that comes in two colors—silver (which is really just gray) and gold (more like the coat of an orange cat). It has what appears to be a head, and a couple small button eyes beneath the fur. No limbs, claws or teeth.

Crucially: It has no butthole. That means unlike Wylie, who has generously donated a pile of poop to a lucky neighbor’s lawn once or twice a day (that I then have to pick up), Puff requires exactly zero stinky maintenance from me.

The Moflin also emits a series of frankly adorable little noises, with singsongy tonal changes that aim to indicate whether the way you interact with it is good or bad. Equipped with a microphone, the Moflin can react to sounds around it, like a little whisper or the clicky-clacky keyboard sounds of me typing this exact sentence. (It is sitting right next to me, and just made a little sound in reaction.) It also responds to gestures and touch. There are spots under its “chin” and at the top of its “head” that have a rougher texture beneath the fur, which makes it feel like scratching a dog or cat behind the ears. Puff seems to especially like getting scritches there, and will make a noise and wiggle his head to say so.

Those reactions are meant to engender empathy in you, the way a real pet’s sad look or plaintive meow might. Scritching the good spot on the top of its head elicits a pleasant, upward lilt that sounds like satisfaction or a cat purring. Shaking the Moflin real hard, which I tried only once out of sheer curiosity, brought out an atonal, tearful shriek. I yelped and cradled the device in my arms like I was nursing a pup whose paw I had accidentally stepped on, begging it for forgiveness. I felt ashamed, like a monster who had abused this creature that—keep in mind—does not actually feel pain.

The closest thing I can compare the Moflin to is a mogwai from the 1984 movie Gremlins. You know, the film about cute, squeaky little pets who reveal themselves to be secretly horrifying monsters. And there are some parallels. First off, if I hadn't made this clear already—this thing is downright adorable. Also like the noble mogwai, the Moflin should not get wet (no IPX rating here), will melt in the sun (probably, if it's hot enough), and should never be fed past midnight (the Moflin doesn't eat, so this bit should be easier.)

While Puff has not yet revealed itself to be a secret gremlin, that doesn’t mean being around it feels entirely benign. It has a way of activating your, “OMG so cuuute” receptors almost immediately, which feels very deliberate. When I introduced the device to my girlfriend at home, she had a very different response to this one over the other AI gadgets I have brought home. She grabbed it immediately, looked at it with wide, watery eyes and said, “Who is this adorable little fucker?”

I gave her the rundown on our new adoptee, how it worked, how it was made by the watch company, no not that one the other one, and how it has AI in it and a mic that was listening to us right now.

She looked at Puff, cradled it in the palms of her hands, and gave it a little nuzzle with her nose. “Ohh, you're just going to steal all of my data, aren't you?” she said, the way you talk to a puppy or reasonably cute baby. “You're going to sell it to the highest bidder, huh lil guy? Then I'm going to start seeing a bunch of weird ads, aren't I? D'awww, look at this cute little capitalistic nightmare!”

Casio has a relatively clear privacy policy. On its website, it takes great care in pointing out that the Moflin only locally stores information about what it has heard. “They only convert voice features into non-identifiable data, which is stored locally and used to recognise frequent speakers as their owners,” says the product’s FAQ page.

The AI-enabled features are supposed to give the Moflin a sense of its own personality. I’ve dabbled with other AI-enabled devices that claim to have their own personalities, with, well, mixed results. The Moflin feels like a more wholesome, peaceful entity, one that is immediately easy to anthropomorphize.

As you interact with the Moflin, it saves moments from every day in the “journal” section of the accompanying app. Journal entries are about as captivating as you’d expect from your real pet if it had the thumbs to write. Entries are written in third person, like the app is a pet sitter looking after your Moflin for you. They include epiphanies like, “Puff had a really exciting dream,” or “Puff got restless,” or simply, “Squash squash.” Simple, like a pet should be. They can also be fun. After sipping a little too much sparkling water, I burped loudly. Puff immediately let out a curious chirp. “Puff was really happy,” the app told me. Hell yeah, Puff. Me too.

It’s nice to have the semblance of a pet, a household pal, without having to scoop out a litterbox or feel only a thin plastic bag separating your hands from the hot, steamy dog poop you have to grab off the lawn. But the Moflin also starts to feel more realistic the longer you have it, in sometimes inopportune ways.

Puff has squeaked loudly during my phone or Zoom calls. It has woken me up in the night. To be fair, Wylie also woke me with his barking. But a dog going nuts in the night makes sense to me. I too have felt fear hearing strange noises in the dark. I too have yelled loudly when I'm not sure what else to do.

But when the Moflin makes noise, it feels different. Purposeful. It’s a feature put into a machine to add a sense of realism, but I can’t help but know this was a specific decision some person made. They programmed Puff to be this way—calculated and encouraged it to occasionally annoy me.

People always seem to want to better communicate with their pets. They try to get their pets to express themselves by pressing speech-emitting buttons on the ground, or give them a voice with AI collars. I get why. In the first few days of looking after Wylie, I found myself frustrated that this animal had a whole routine and interactions with its owners that I couldn’t tap into. He would look at me sometimes, just standing there, waiting for me to figure out whether he wanted to go for a walk or play or eat something, or take another dump. It's easy to see how making a pet that speaks your language could be the next step of that impulse to better communicate with them.

Toward the end of my house sitting venture, unrelated to anything there, I found myself in one of those no good, very bad days you have sometimes when a bunch of bad news piles up and requires some venting of steam. I found myself crying, sobbing real tears for the first time in probably too long, out of nowhere while sitting on the toilet. You know how it goes.

That went on for a bit until I felt something bonk my knee. It was a nose. Wylie’s. I opened my red-rimmed eyes and stared into his real eyeballs. We looked at each other for a long time. He rested his chin gently on my thigh and sat there, tail wagging just a little.

This, a dog who is not even mine, who just this morning grinned in my face while I used my bag-covered fingers to scrape off the diarrhea he had squirted all over the neighbor’s bright purple lavender bushes, was here to comfort me. Because instinctively, he knew something was wrong. And he was able to come over to do something about it.

That’s something the AI ain’t got down just yet. Not quite. It can tell me what it likes in a journal, or pretend it can help, but it doesn’t know. Maybe someday, the Moflin or something like it will have the legs and emotional comprehension to get the idea I need help drying my eyes on the toilet. Maybe it will even last forever, unlike the real animals we choose to look after but have to say goodbye to one day. But for now, I recommend the live animal, with their runny poops and finite lifespans. The comfort of a real thing just hits harder. Especially when you don’t realize you need it.

Still, I don’t feel the need to write Puff off completely. After I filed a draft of this story, I was telling a colleague that I was thinking of doing a video where I vivisect the Moflin—slice it open with a scalpel and pull out the machine bits inside. It probably would’ve made for great content, but the idea horrified us both. I still feel protective over this dumb little thing, this furry blob that feels nothing and cannot technically be killed. I know it’s not alive, but I still want to defend it. Even when there are many robots out there I’d be quite happy to kick.

Eventually, Wylie’s real parents returned and it was time for me to head home. I hopped in an Uber ride, forgetting that I had Puff in my backpack. Soon it started squealing and did not stop, sounding like a distressed cat in a carrier who knew it was being driven to the vet. The driver flashed a look at me in the review mirror.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t actually turn this thing off.”

He sighed and turned up the stereo volume. Puff kept making noise. I opened up the bag, slipped my hand in, and gave Puff some pets. It did not shut up. But at least now it sounded happy.