Meta puts its AI assistant on a keychain | Hacker News Reader

Meta puts its AI assistant on a keychain

arstechnica.com

13 pointswrxd11 comments

What is it with AI guys and having a "little buddy" on your screen? Half the vibe coded demos I see show some pixel-art character in the corner, everybody wants to put them in their smartglasses, etc.

Do you really need a fancy tamagotchi to be your friend all the time? Maybe you could name it Jarvis, that would be original.

I agree, but maybe it is not the norm for design folks?

I'm thinking of the movie "Her" where the ai assistant was only ever a voice. And siri, and grok in a tesla, etc. I think we can do non-visual personas.

I don't know, maybe corporate design folks think in trademarks and logos and this is just part of that?

(or what about deaf people? Do they need text, or something amenable to lip reading?)

I don't mean to pick on you, but the negativity of this post is pretty typical of HN. God forbid people try to inject a little joy into their day on our way to the AIpocalypse.

My gf loves the custom Codex "pet" she created that emotes as she uses Codex to build her recipe website. I don't care to turn the pet on when I'm using Codex, but I can't believe there are people who find a way to complain about it being an option. Please lighten up.

> God forbid people try to inject a little joy into their day on our way to the AIpocalypse.

This, but unironically. "a little joy" is the hook that made people addicted to TikTok, Facebook and all sorts of harmful online services. If we let OpenAI and Anthropic brainwash users like Apple and Twitter did, they'll never learn to advocate for themselves.

Haha, I'm with you. I'm always seeing obvious feel-good engagement slop (AI or otherwise) from Tikok clips reposted on Reddit - like the most obviously fake saccharine pablum A/B tested to grab people's attention and occasionally I can't help but open the comments out of morbid curiosity.

And it makes me feel like a bitter curmudgeon seeing so many people act like it's real and the few people who point out the obvious ad/lying description/AI slop/scripted skit/deceptive editing/etc getting dogpiled for being a cynical Debbie Downer who should shut up and let people enjoy things.

Personally, it doesn't make me feel good to be baited and manipulated for my scarce attention. If anything I find it especially offensive to hijack happiness neurons in my brain for an ulterior motive... that does not make me happy. But increasingly it's looking like I'm in the minority and out of touch with the zeitgeist.

tech people will clown on this but I think its pretty genius

The average person does not care to use their Muse to optimize their life for productivity. they use ai assistants to shoot the shit and maybe cancel subscriptions they no longer use. Anthropomorphizing the mascot and making tamagotchis is much better for engagement

when would someone use this over a smart watch

1. its cute and fun and you can check out ur friends' muse

2. Muse itself is a sandboxed agent that will magically do things for you

I can't say I am a fan of Meta's business but I do like this kind of thing which is like "inside-out" virtual reality, that is something that brings a digital character into the real world for us to interact with.

Is it local only? Well, when it is connected to the internet, it actually forwards your secret questions directly to their database. For me this sounds more like they sneaked you - assuming you use it - to be in their world, not the other way around.

It's an object from their world which is brought into (you can experience) in our world.

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