- Sharp’s upcoming AI companion Poketomo is a palm-sized, meerkat-shaped robotic with a glowing stomach
- Poketomo is designed to offer emotional help, particularly for girls of their 20s and 30s
- It combines cute design with conversational AI and syncs with a smartphone app to keep up a steady relationship
Japanese shopper tech model Sharp thinks it has an answer to loneliness amongst girls of their 20s and 30s: an AI-powered meerkat named Poketomo, that glows when it’s glad and remembers your favourite café.
Poketomo is ready to reach this winter (suppose November or December), offering a pocket-sized companion lower than 5 inches tall and constructed to speak with you about your day, and bear in mind your shared experiences because of Sharp’s proprietary AI mannequin.
The stomach glows in pastel tones when it’s excited or comforted. Its head tilts barely when it’s pondering. It encompasses a set of fundamental physique actions, all designed to convey emotion. Nevertheless, the guts of Poketomo lies within the AI mannequin constructed into the robotic for quick responses and makes use of the cloud for extra nuanced emotional understanding.
This isn’t the primary time a tech firm has created a cutesy, non-threatening AI assistant designed to fill social house with out being intrusive. However Poketomo could be essentially the most deliberate and fully-realized model of that technique. You don’t work together with it by a display screen or keyboard. You carry it like an adjunct. You discuss to it like a good friend. It listens, it learns, and it remembers you. It’s designed to be emotionally out there and bodily lovely.
ポケとも プロモーションビデオ（2025/8） – YouTube 
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Sharp is leaning arduous into the idea of “empathic AI.” Poketomo can supposedly sense emotional cues and use that to provoke conversations based mostly in your temper or latest conduct. It’s programmed to supply phrases of encouragement and help, after which glow softly to let you realize it’s glad you shared one thing.
If you don’t have the bodily machine on you, the Poketomo app syncs recollections and character knowledge with the machine, so conversations with one carry over to the opposite. Sharp says you may construct your relationship completely with the app in case you favor, however the bodily model is best, and it's what Sharp is betting folks will carry, pose with, and type a bond round.
AI companionship
Regardless of seeming like a baby's toy, Sharp says Poketomo was designed for younger grownup girls. There's a promotional manga collection cementing that truth. It facilities round a girl named Nanami in her late 20s, residing alone, navigating work and life stress, and discovering small moments of pleasure in conversations together with her Poketomo. Even the promotional images largely present a younger girl with a Poketomo clipped to a classy purse, smiling whereas it talks to her.
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The query is whether or not this type of stylized emotional heat will really make folks really feel higher about their lives. Will they really feel much less lonely due to a bit of robotic with some subtle response triggers?
To be truthful, it doesn’t attempt to be human, tricking folks subconsciously into believing they’re speaking to an actual human, but it surely would possibly make some uncomfortable. And if the very best new concept in shopper AI is “make it fuzzy and let it ask how your day was,” what does that say in regards to the limits of the tech? I don't suppose Poketomo would be the remedy for loneliness, but it surely would possibly jumpstart a development of digital pets capable of mimic with emotional depth.
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