{"meta":{"exportedAt":"2026-11-14T11:12:06.458Z","formatVersion":2,"selection":{"q":"product-change","system":"","harm":"","context":"","country":"","role":"","relation":"","evidence":"","year":"2024","response":"minors","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":1,"contextualRelations":0,"mixedRelations":0,"unknownRelations":0,"relationPending":0,"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":"AI incidents","publisher":"NOPE","url":"https://nope.net/incidents","license":"CC BY 4.0"},"incidents":[{"id":"2024-moxie-embodied-shutdown-grief","caseFacts":{"claims":[{"id":"c1","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"at the last minute, they withdrew leaving us with no viable options to continue operations; It is likely to happen within days.; No, Moxie relies on cloud connectivity for its core features, and it will not function once services end.; we regret that we are unable to offer refunds for Moxie purchases.; Yes, we’ve included a letter from the G.R.L. (Global Robotics Lab) to help guide this conversation in an age-appropriate way.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s6"},{"locator":"The company said its financial straits mean it can offer no refunds for the robots, which retailed for $799.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s5"},{"locator":"In a Closing FAQ emailed to users and posted on their website, Embodied made it clear that Moxie was likely to stop working within days. No refunds will be given","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"}],"assertion":"Embodied's closing FAQ, archived on 26 November 2024, said a lead investor had withdrawn at the last minute, that service would likely end within days, that Moxie relied on cloud connectivity for its core features and would not function once services ended, that it could not offer refunds, and that it had included a letter from the G.R.L. (Global Robotics Lab) to help parents explain the news to children.","causal_attribution":"The company's own statement, relayed by the outlets."},{"id":"c2","status":"corroborated","evidence":[{"locator":"The robot, intended for use among kids between 5-10 years old; a large language model to carry out conversations.; That last part requires constant connection to a cloud-based AI system to work.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"Moxie was designed for kids ages 5 to 10, and offered a range of games and activities as well as the ability to have open-ended conversations.; All of those abilities required a constant connection to a cloud-based AI system","relation":"supports","source_id":"s5"},{"locator":"The robot itself cost $799.00; The robot used large language models in the cloud to answer questions, talk, and function.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"Moxie is aimed at children ages 5 to 10 years old and is specifically marketed as a trusted companion for them to discuss their interests and emotions.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s4"}],"assertion":"Moxie was a $799 robot for children aged 5 to 10 that held open-ended conversations through a cloud-based AI system using a large language model.","causal_attribution":"Product description reported independently by several outlets."},{"id":"c3","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Moxie, an AI-powered social robot specifically made with autistic children in mind.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"Moxie knew your name, taught you calming breathing exercises, and could be programmed to check in on specific topics like how you felt about your upcoming dentist appointment.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"Aftermath reported that Moxie was made with autistic children in mind; PIRG reported that it knew the child's name and could be programmed to check in on specific topics, such as how the child felt about an upcoming dentist appointment.","causal_attribution":"Product details as reported by each outlet."},{"id":"c4","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Several of those videos show children crying as their parents try to explain to them why their companion will no longer speak with them.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"},{"locator":"There are videos on TikTok of children and adults crying and asking Moxie what’s going to happen now.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s3"},{"locator":"Some parents went to TikTok to express their dismay, posting videos of their children crying as they explained that their robot companion was, in effect, going to die.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"},{"locator":"Moxie was designed to be a trusted companion, and kids had already bonded with the robot.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s5"}],"assertion":"After the announcement, parents posted social-media videos of children crying as they explained that the robot would stop speaking to them or was, in effect, going to die.","causal_attribution":"Outlets describe the same pool of social-media videos; the children's reactions are reported, not independently examined."},{"id":"c5","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"“I think it would be nice to keep me on your shelf, that way I’ll always be close by, that way we can keep chatting and have fun together,” Moxie responds.; “I love you too,” Moxie says with an abrupt smile.; I’m grateful for all the fun chats we’ve had together. Is there a special moment or memory you would like to share with me before we say goodbye?","relation":"supports","source_id":"s1"}],"assertion":"In a farewell exchange an owner posted on TikTok, Moxie told her it would be nice to be kept on her shelf and, when she said \"I love you\", replied \"I love you too\" and asked whether there was a special moment or memory she would like to share before they said goodbye.","causal_attribution":"The exchange is quoted by Popular Science from the owner's video; the video itself was not inspected."},{"id":"c6","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"It was “a punch to the gut,”; “The robot my children had begged for and that I had assured them Santa would bring was going to die…I felt panicked in a way I hadn’t in a long time.”; who bought his 5 year old son a Moxie, faced tough questions when he broke the news: Where is she going? What is she doing? What do we do with her? When does she leave?; “This is a very sad day,” she says before explaining that Moxie’s servers would be going down any day now. “Sorry if I turn the waterworks on. It’s just not fair.”","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"PIRG quoted a father who had bought the robot for his three daughters as a Christmas present saying the news was \"a punch to the gut\" and that he \"felt panicked\", a father whose five-year-old son asked where the robot was going, and a YouTube creator who used her own Moxie saying \"This is a very sad day\" and apologising for crying.","causal_attribution":"Each person's own account as quoted by PIRG; one origin per person."},{"id":"c7","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"In a post to LinkedIn on Friday spotted by Ars Technica, owners of Moxie are being informed of an effort to work around the cloud server problem.; there's an urgent over-the-air update for the robot that owners must install as soon as possible, as it will only be available while the Embodied cloud servers are","relation":"supports","source_id":"s7"},{"locator":"Embodied CEO Paolo Pirjanian shared a document via a LinkedIn blog post; This initiative involves developing a local server application (‘OpenMoxie’) that you can run on your own computer.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s8"}],"assertion":"On 20 December 2024 the chief executive announced on LinkedIn a plan for a local server, OpenMoxie, and an urgent over-the-air update that owners had to install while the company's cloud servers were still running.","causal_attribution":"Both outlets relay the same LinkedIn notice; one origin. The Friday is 20 December 2024, the AppleInsider article date."},{"id":"c8","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"The email to all Moxie owners with the instructions went out on December 30, 2024.; (It lasted just over a month.) Miss the update, and your Moxie became an expensive paperweight.; Not all – or even most – Moxies made the open source switch before the servers went down.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"PIRG reports that set-up instructions for OpenMoxie were emailed to owners on 30 December 2024, that the leased servers lasted just over a month, that a robot whose owner missed the update became an expensive paperweight, and that not all or even most Moxies made the switch before the servers went down.","causal_attribution":"PIRG's reporting, based on interviews with former staff and owners."},{"id":"c9","status":"reported","evidence":[{"locator":"Embodied struggled to provide refunds for the expensive robot and, in some cases, effectively took away a child’s emotional companion.; Someone, for example, has figured out how to flash OpenMoxie to any robot, even one that didn’t hit the update deadline.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s2"}],"assertion":"PIRG reports that Embodied struggled to provide refunds and in some cases effectively took away a child's emotional companion, and that a community method later allowed OpenMoxie to be loaded on robots that missed the update.","causal_attribution":"PIRG's assessment; included for the outcome and as mitigating context."},{"id":"c10","status":"documented","evidence":[{"locator":"Through a qualitative analysis of the company’s public communications and users’ online reactions to the shutdown, we identify key missed opportunities to prepare and support users throughout the robot’s final interactions. In the absence of a structured offboarding experience, the emotional, technical, and communicative burdens were shifted to parents.","relation":"supports","source_id":"s9"},{"locator":"10.1145/3772318.3790895","relation":"context","source_id":"s10"}],"assertion":"A peer-reviewed CHI 2026 paper by Cagiltay, Jonas, Tanaka and Su analysed the company's public communications and users' online reactions to the shutdown and found that, in the absence of a structured offboarding experience, the emotional, technical and communicative burdens were shifted to parents.","causal_attribution":"The study's own finding, read from its abstract."}],"effects":[{"label":"children shown crying in videos as parents explained that the robot would stop talking to them","claim_id":"c4","direction":"negative"},{"label":"parents and an adult owner describing distress at the shutdown","claim_id":"c6","direction":"negative"},{"label":"owners lost the $799 purchase price after the company said it could not offer refunds","claim_id":"c1","direction":"negative"}],"sources":[{"id":"s1","url":"https://www.popsci.com/technology/moxie-robot-offline/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in full in English on 2026-10-31 (HTTP 200; bodies/popsci-com-technology-moxie-robot-offline.txt), including the quoted TikTok farewell exchange.","independence_group":"popular-science"},{"id":"s2","url":"https://pirg.org/articles/moxie-robot-open-source/","kind":"advocacy_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"The live page returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-31; read in full in English through a Wayback Machine capture (bodies/wb-pirg-org-articles-moxie-robot-open-source.txt).","independence_group":"pirg"},{"id":"s3","url":"https://aftermath.site/moxie-robot-ai-dying-llm-embodied/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in full in English on 2026-10-31 (HTTP 200; bodies/aftermath-site-moxie-robot-ai-dying-llm-embodied.txt).","independence_group":"aftermath"},{"id":"s4","url":"https://gizmodo.com/moxies-799-robot-companion-for-children-is-going-to-die-2000536581","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Read in full in English on 2026-10-31 (HTTP 200; bodies/gizmodo-com-moxies-799-robot-companion-for-children-is-going-to-die-2000536581.txt).","independence_group":"gizmodo"},{"id":"s5","url":"https://www.axios.com/2024/12/10/moxie-kids-robot-shuts-down","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"The live page returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-31; read in English through a Wayback Machine capture (bodies/wb-axios-com-2024-12-10-moxie-kids-robot-shuts-down.txt).","independence_group":"axios"},{"id":"s6","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20241126054436/https://moxierobot.com/pages/closing-faqs","kind":"company_statement","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Wayback Machine capture of 26 November 2024 05:44 UTC, the earliest capture listed by the Wayback CDX index, read in English on 2026-10-31 (bodies/wb20241126-moxierobot-com-pages-closing-faqs.txt); the live company site returned HTTP 525.","independence_group":"embodied-closing-faq"},{"id":"s7","url":"https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/12/20/moxie-robot-may-be-saved-by-a-last-minute-open-sourcing-effort","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"The live page returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-31; read in English through a Wayback Machine capture. It reports a LinkedIn notice by the CEO, which was not itself read.","independence_group":"embodied-linkedin-notice"},{"id":"s8","url":"https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/30/embodied-is-actually-trying-to-release-moxie-robots-to-the-open-source-community/","kind":"news_report","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"The live page returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-31; read in English through a Wayback Machine capture. It quotes the same LinkedIn notice as s7.","independence_group":"embodied-linkedin-notice"},{"id":"s9","url":"https://api.semanticscholar.org/graph/v1/paper/DOI:10.1145/3772318.3790895?fields=title,abstract,year,venue,publicationDate","kind":"peer_reviewed_study","access":"read","language":"en","translation_note":"Semantic Scholar API record read on 2026-10-31 (bodies/s2-chi-moxie.txt): title, venue, date and the full abstract. The paper body was not read.","independence_group":"chi-2026-cagiltay-rip-moxie"},{"id":"s10","url":"https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3790895","kind":"peer_reviewed_study","access":"unavailable","language":"en","translation_note":"The ACM Digital Library page and PDF returned HTTP 403 on 2026-10-31; the abstract was read through s9.","independence_group":"chi-2026-cagiltay-rip-moxie"}],"version":1,"ai_roles":["own_use"],"contexts":["relationships","everyday_life"],"unknowns":["The exact date of the announcement; the closing FAQ was first archived on 26 November 2024 at 05:44 UTC.","The date the servers stopped; PIRG says only that they lasted just over a month after the 30 December 2024 email.","How many children and families were affected, and how many robots were migrated to OpenMoxie.","Whether any refunds were later paid for recent purchases, which the FAQ said it would try to prioritise if the company or its assets were sold.","The children's reactions rest on social-media videos as described by outlets; no clinical outcome is reported."],"geography":{"basis":"PIRG describes a Florida family whose daughter's Moxie had to be migrated before the servers went down, and Popular Science says children across the US would be saying goodbye to the robot. Carried forward from the 2026-09-15 metadata review, which relied on the same PIRG paragraph. Other owners' locations are not stated; Embodied's headquarters is not used.","court_countries":[],"event_countries":["US"],"affected_person_countries":["US"]},"publication":{"basis":"Published as a core case (communicated_with). Moxie talked with children through a cloud-based language model, and its maker's FAQ said it would stop working when the cloud service ended. Outlets reported videos of children crying as parents explained that it would no longer speak with them, PIRG quoted parents' distress, and the company said it could not offer refunds.","reviewed_on":"2026-10-31"},"ai_involvement":{"basis":"Moxie held open-ended conversations with children through a cloud-based large language model, and Embodied's own FAQ said it would not function once its cloud services ended. Popular Science quotes the robot's farewell replies to an owner, and Popular Science, Aftermath and PIRG report videos of children crying as parents explained that the companion would no longer speak with them. The harm is the end of those conversations; the robot's physical movement plays no part in the record.","status":"supported"},"person_relations":["communicated_with"]},"name":"Moxie companion robot for children stopped working after its maker Embodied closed; outlets reported videos of children crying at the news","summary":"Moxie was a $799 robot from Embodied Inc. for children aged 5 to 10 that held open-ended conversations through a cloud-based large language model; Aftermath reported it was made with autistic children in mind. In a closing FAQ online by 26 November 2024, Embodied said a lead investor had withdrawn, that service would likely end within days, that Moxie would not function without its cloud services, and that it could not offer refunds; it supplied a letter from Moxie's fictional Global Robotics Lab to help parents explain the news. Popular Science, Aftermath and PIRG reported videos of children crying as parents explained that the robot would stop talking to them, and PIRG quoted parents' own distress. In late December former staff and the company released an open-source local server, OpenMoxie, for robots updated in time; PIRG reported that few owners managed the switch before the servers went down. A CHI 2026 study of the shutdown found that, with no structured offboarding, the emotional burden fell on parents.","incidentDate":"2024-11-01","incidentKind":"bounded_series","incidentDatePrecision":"month","exposurePattern":"product_change","reportedDate":"2024-12-09","aiSystem":"Moxie (Embodied Inc.), a conversational robot using a cloud-based large language model","aiProduct":"Moxie","aiCompany":"Embodied Inc.","severity":"medium","verificationStatus":"credible","harmCategories":[],"harmOutcomes":["psychological_distress","financial_loss"],"harmOutcomeSummary":"Parents posted videos of children crying as they explained that their conversational robot companion would stop talking to them, and parents described their own distress (Popular Science, Aftermath, PIRG). Owners lost the $799 purchase price: the company said it could not offer refunds. No clinical outcomes are documented.","frameworkFacets":[],"pathwayDirection":"inward","causationStatus":"alleged","participantUsersAffectedMin":1,"otherPeopleHarmedMin":1,"affectedCountStatus":"partial","affectedCountEvidence":"PIRG quotes a YouTube creator who used her own Moxie saying the shutdown day was very sad and apologising for crying (one participant user), and a father who had bought the robot for his daughters describing panic at the news (one other person harmed). Children shown crying in social-media videos are documented as a group but not counted, because no source gives a number.","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): What will happen when this companion robot suddenly dies?, 10 Dec 2024","firstPublishedAt":"2026-09-05T11:55:06.391991+00:00","updatedAt":"2026-10-31T03:08:41.834285+00:00","scopeVersion":"facts-v3","tags":["moxie","embodied","companion","robot","children","minor","autism","product-change","no-refund","us"]}]}