Moxie companion robot for children stopped working after its maker Embodied closed; outlets reported videos of children crying at the news
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 In a closing FAQ online by 26 November 2024, Embodied said a lead investor had withdrawn, that service would likely end within days, that Moxie would not function without its cloud services, and that it could not offer refunds; it supplied a letter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.
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution alleged · 9 sources, 8 underlying accounts · Added 05/09/2026