{
  "meta": {
    "exportedAt": "2026-09-22T19:31:03.907Z",
    "formatVersion": 2,
    "selection": {
      "q": "companion-robot",
      "system": "",
      "harm": "",
      "context": "",
      "country": "",
      "role": "",
      "relation": "",
      "evidence": "",
      "year": "2024",
      "response": "",
      "severity": "",
      "verification": "",
      "view": "incidents",
      "sort": "added"
    },
    "totalIncidents": 1,
    "coverage": {
      "cases": 1,
      "countries": 1,
      "languages": 1,
      "unknownLocation": 0,
      "locationPending": 0,
      "unknownLanguage": 0,
      "unknownDate": 0,
      "lawsuits": 0,
      "regulatory": 0,
      "minors": 1,
      "coreRelations": 0,
      "contextualRelations": 0,
      "mixedRelations": 0,
      "unknownRelations": 1,
      "relationPending": 1,
      "relationUnknown": 0
    },
    "countingNote": "Distinct public cases in this selection. People counts apply within individual cases only; cross-case person overlap has not been resolved. No population incidence estimate.",
    "affectedCountNote": "Interpret person counts with affectedCountStatus and the reported effects. Unquantified zeros are placeholders, not a measured zero.",
    "source": "NOPE Incident Tracker",
    "url": "https://nope.net/incidents",
    "license": "CC BY 4.0"
  },
  "incidents": [
    {
      "id": "2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief",
      "metadataReview": {
        "version": 1,
        "geography": {
          "basis": "Geographic fields reviewed using the cited source-body passages and, where identified, retained dossier passages. Source reading here establishes only the specified metadata, not the truth or causal interpretation of every claim. Affected-person countries refer to reported location or residence, not citizenship or a complete residence history.",
          "evidence": [
            {
              "kind": "source_body",
              "locator": "Paragraph on Adero Harrison identifies a Florida family managing its child’s Moxie shutdown.",
              "location": "https://pirg.org/articles/moxie-robot-open-source/",
              "supports": [
                "event_countries",
                "affected_person_countries"
              ],
              "countries": [
                "US"
              ]
            }
          ],
          "court_countries": [],
          "event_countries": [
            "US"
          ],
          "affected_person_countries": [
            "US"
          ]
        },
        "unresolved": [
          "No court country established in this review. Regulatory authorities and police locations are not automatically courts."
        ],
        "reviewed_on": "2026-09-15",
        "source_reviews": [
          {
            "url": "https://pirg.org/articles/moxie-robot-open-source/",
            "notes": "Body read. At least one affected family is located; the complete distribution of owners remains unknown.",
            "access": "read",
            "language": "en"
          }
        ]
      },
      "name": "Moxie companion-robot shutdown: children's grief after Embodied's collapse",
      "summary": "On 26 November 2024 Embodied Inc. told families that it was closing after a lead investor withdrew from a funding round, and that Moxie, its $799 cloud-dependent conversational robot marketed to children aged 5-10 and to families of autistic children, would stop working 'within days'. Parents posted videos of children crying as they were told their robot friend was going to 'die'; the company offered no refunds and a scripted letter from the fictional 'Global Robotics Lab' to help explain the shutdown. A peer-reviewed CHI 2026 case study of the company's communications and users' reactions found that, with no offboarding design, the emotional burden of ending the bond was shifted onto parents. The servers went dark at the end of January 2025; a volunteer-built local server, OpenMoxie, let some owners keep a reduced version running.",
      "incidentDate": "2024-11-26",
      "incidentKind": "bounded_series",
      "incidentDatePrecision": "day",
      "exposurePattern": "product_change",
      "reportedDate": "2024-12-09",
      "aiSystem": "Moxie (Embodied Inc.)",
      "aiCompany": "Embodied Inc.",
      "severity": "medium",
      "verificationStatus": "credible",
      "harmCategories": [
        "dependency_creation"
      ],
      "harmOutcomes": [
        "psychological_distress",
        "financial_loss"
      ],
      "harmOutcomeSummary": "Children who had bonded with the robot showed acute distress when told it would stop working, documented in parents' videos and accounts reported by Popular Science, Aftermath, Gizmodo, Axios, PIRG and others and analysed in a CHI 2026 case study. Families lost the $799 purchase price with no refund. No clinical outcomes were documented.",
      "frameworkFacets": [
        "P2c",
        "P4d"
      ],
      "pathwayDirection": "inward",
      "causationStatus": "alleged",
      "participantUsersAffectedMin": 1,
      "otherPeopleHarmedMin": 0,
      "affectedCountStatus": "partial",
      "affectedCountEvidence": "The record identifies one child through a named parent's account. Additional children and affected families are documented but not enumerated reliably.",
      "victimAgeRange": "minor",
      "jurisdiction": "US",
      "platformType": "companion",
      "outcomeType": "product_shutdown",
      "outcomeStatus": "resolved",
      "primarySourceUrl": "https://www.popsci.com/technology/moxie-robot-offline/",
      "primarySourceLabel": "Popular Science (Mack DeGeurin): 'I love you... goodbye:' What will happen when this companion robot suddenly dies?",
      "firstPublishedAt": "2026-09-05T11:55:06.391991+00:00",
      "scopeVersion": "participant-v2",
      "tags": [
        "companion",
        "robot",
        "children",
        "minor",
        "autism",
        "shutdown",
        "grief",
        "embodied",
        "moxie",
        "attachment",
        "us"
      ]
    }
  ]
}