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Comment by kodoman | Hacker News Reader

Looking through the advertising.

> Through communication, Moflin’s emotional state changes. Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would. Moflin does not possess actual emotions like humans do. Their emotional expressions are simulated by AI. And lots of bits of the advert seems to be explain how it's not real in the QA and that everything is a simulation.

I have not used the product, but nothing strikes me as dishonest about the advertising.

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> Your robot companion can show joy, sadness, and happiness, reacting just like a living creature would.

Seems like a lie to me. Compare:

> Our synthetic foodstuffs can taste sweet, salty, tart or tangy, delicious flavors just like natural ingredients.

(But then it's all aspartame, etc.)

I guess we are really debating the semantics of the sentences now like lawyers but to me the verb show is not particularly difficult to achieve or ambitious or misleading to use in this sort of product. A toy with a that has a smiley face and a frowning face is capable of showing two different emotions.

Your second one point also does not seem like a lie to me since it's claiming to emulate natural ingredient (although here I guess to be just like means to emulate perfectly).

I don't really see why any one would look at the product and it's marketing as evil. It seems to me aimed at people who can not have pets and are want to create a simulation of a soothing positive interaction with a pet. I don't see this as exploitative (apart from it's exploiting a desire that people have in the same way that virtually all products do), I can not see someone forming a relationship with this to the detriment of human interaction or exacerbate some kind of mental illness or cause addiction. It does seem a little expensive and that would be my only criticism of the product so far as I can see.

I don’t know what you are on about. Can the robot exhibit signs of the emotions described? If it can then the sentence is not a lie. If it can’t then it is a lie. Are you saying that it won’t do what the sentence says?

The sentence is not saying “it is a living creature”. It says it behaves as one. How much of that sentence is a lie obviously depends on how well the robot works.

i bought one about a year ago and used it for 20 days or so. Then I realised casio offered a full money back return for 30 days. And sorry little moflin your emotions were not real enough for me to want to keep you vs get $400 back.

They do look cute, but $400 is steep.

it wears off quick.

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