Dispatch
MIT Tech Review on what happens to autistic kids when the AI companion robot's servers go dark
Published Aug 17, the piece follows Moxie — Embodied's 15-inch companion robot marketed to neurodivergent children — through the company's 2024 collapse, a 2025 investor revival, and that successor's own failure with a June 2026 shutdown deadline. The clinical evidence never supported the emotional bond it created: Brian Scassellati's study found improvements vanished within 30 days of removing the robot, a 2024 literature review found most studies 'lacked significant clinical evidence,' and psychologist Zachary Warren says 'we haven't really found big effects.' The durable lesson for anyone shipping a companion product is that emotional attachment outlives the server bill.
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