It's finally happening.
I'm about to become a mom to a robot.
Sony sent me their new artificially intelligent Internet connected puppy dog Ibo.
This fellow starts shipping in the US later this year, but he costs a whopping.
$2,900.
I met iBow twice before but now I get to take him home to my family for one week and document what it's like to live with a robot pet.
And I can't wait to see how my two year old daughter reacts to it.
I'm here in my New York City apartment.
IBow is in the box.
I'll be back.
Let's open it up.
Yeah.
Station.
[MUSIC]
Okay, say wake up, doggie.
Wake up.
His name is Ibo.
Ibo.
Ibo has a camera in his nose and is supposed to recognize different people and objects.
His personality is molded by your actions.
Like when you give them praise by saying good boy.
Or petting it on the sensors on it's back and on it's head.
Over the course of the week my daughter just fell in love with Ibo.
She would share her toys and feed him pretend food.
She loved it when Ibo would sing a little robot song and cuz she had such a happy reaction He would randomly sing with her all the time.
As for me, I think Aibo knew I was a sucker for shaking hands.
Good boy, good boy.
And when he played with his toy bone, although, he didn't always get it on the first try.
Like a real puppy, Aibo is not predictable.
Sometimes he would randomly go pee pee.
Of course, it's all just pretend.
Gee thanks.
In the final version of Aibo, there will be this app that helps you teach him new tricks and you can take photos with the camera in his nose, but the app wasn't ready for me to test.
He's supposed to figure out how to get to his charging station on his own.
That only happened a couple of times, so I just put him on the charger at night when I was tired and needed quiet time.
And he stayed on his charger base all night, but if you ever made any sound at night, he would wake up, make noise, and his glowing eyes would just look at you in the dark.
Now in the morning, Ibo did not always get off his charger station right away to play, even if we tried to call him.
He's supposed to learn the layout of your home over time, there is a camera near his tail that maps location.
He often got caught up in nooks, and in corners, and I found myself always rescuing him.
All right, come on.
He didn't leave my living room very much.
Maybe learning a home takes more time.
The most fun of this test was seeing my daughter's interactions.
But I needed to do more research.
What do others think of Ibo?
All right so part of this experiment, I'm very curious to see how Real dogs act with Aibo, so I came over to my colleague Iyaz's place.
Hey Iyaz.
Hey Bridget.
Hey Aibo.
And Aibo is going to meet Tory.
[MUSIC]
So what's your thoughts, Iyaz?
I think she went from not being sure what the Aibo was, to hating it completely.
[NOISE] [NOISE] [NOISE] [NOISE].
And then eventually just stopped caring that it was there, so.
It's very popular.
I guess that's progress.
Maybe one day she'd accept it into our family.
I wanted to take Aibo on a field trip today to get some opinions from senior citizens, because what's interesting about this robot is that it could be a companion to the elderly.
So let's see what people think.
Go pee-pee.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
It doesn't understand.
There was something really sweet about our visit to the senior center.
[APPLAUSE]
People who needed a smile found happiness with AIBO.
When I came near, cuz I had had a rough week this week and
It seems so real.
But the icing was when he put his paws up nad touched my face.
You know, like you're going to be okay.
[LAUGH] So that there, my god, made my day.
Of course, not everyone liked the idea of a robot dog.
We're in a computer age and people are talking to computers instead of people and now they're gonna talk to robots dogs instead of people and that is an expensive dog.
Why would I want to talk to an inanimate machine?
Machine.
She's got a point.
Why do we easily go gaga over a machine?
Every day with Aibo, I found myself compelled to give it love and encouragement.
But why did I care what this thing thought of me?
It's just an expensive Tamagotchi.
And yet, it was a sad moment when we had to pack it up and say goodbye.
[MUSIC]
Puppy, too, miss puppy, too.
[MUSIC]
<< So, it has been a few days since I packed up Aibo and as I look back, it's clear Sony has something special here with this robot.
I mean, when you add up everything, the animation of all its moving parts.
The algorithms, the AI, it just comes to life in this cute way.
Now, even though Aibo is quite charming, obviously this is not for everyone.
And it can feel a little weird these days to put a device in your home with a camera and a microphone.
But Sony says Aibo is not recording audio.
So that made me feel better, because those voice command tricks They're happening locally on the dog itself.
What is saved to Sony's cloud is this data history of the dog's interactions with people and stuff like the measurement between walls and rooms.
You can always wipe that data if you do wanna start fresh.
Also, if you choose to take photos with the camera in Aibo's nose, those photos are gonna be saved to the cloud.
But users cannot take video, at least not yet.
Maybe in the future he can get an update to be a watchdog as a security camera, but, for now, it is really just something designed to entertain or keep you company if you are alone.
And you know what, just the creation of such a thing is quite an impressive feat these days.
Because we're flooded with gadgets that feed our Internet addiction and keep us scrolling.
But here, Sony built something that can lift us up away from the screen, and even lift up hearts.
