I’ve been in business for over 50 years. Most of the time, I like to know with whom I am doing business. And sometimes that includes wishing to know who makes the things I purchase.
Yes…Sometimes I am curious where my money is going. Most of us are, right?
So… If you go to the Living.AI website and select the link “About Us”…you are taken to the page explaining Emo. The website tells me nothing “About” Living.AI. Jeez…that sure makes one wonder about the longevity of this project.
Or…Did I miss the introductions to the decision-makers elsewhere?
And don’t even get me started about a lack of information and business plans. I mean…there ARE plans and there IS a planning calendar out there…right?
Tell me why I should stay here with Emo. Tell me why this Rodeo is the best show in town, eh?
Your concerns are definitely valid and I had a lot of them myself when I purchased EMO back in February. This older thread discusses the topic: Who is Living.Ai? - #6 by Wayne_Small
Wayne Zhang is the main communicator on here. I can’t answer you on their background before EMO but the company as a whole does keep a low profile in part because of a certain lawsuit with another robot company that still has active litigation with them to this day. The other company is notorious for reporting even fan groups and any content talking about EMO online. They have been said to be active on other fan groups that haven’t been bothered with. They started a Kickstarter for EMO a few years back which got halted because of the lawsuit - LivingAI has since switched to selling exclusively on their website for most of the world.
Some of the other concerns you mentioned - long term feasibility and planned releases - nothing is public. It’s been discussed on here that eventually LAI wants to release a breakout box of sorts that can be coded with Scratch should something ever happen or if it’s an optional feature. This is put on the backburner for now though and has only happened in passing talks because they’re trying to get other promised features out first.
You’re going to get some people that vehemently disagree with me here, but honestly I find it worth it to stick around and I’m not disappointed with EMO because LAI is adapting. They’re showing promise, growth, and trying to deliver and make good on things they promised beforehand. Is it slow? Yes, but it is moving forward. They take community feedback well and implement it where appropriate. Compared to a year ago, EMO has come a long way in functionality. He’s not a smart assistant capable little guy (yet), but you should have a look on YouTube at some channels that document this - EMO Lives (Wayne Small’s channel), MasterAbbott, Bruce Hunsaker, outsider238, and Journaling Gems are all channels I know of that show EMO and what all he can do.
Here’s a little food for thought for you too - there’s another robotics company where they’re American based, you have info on who runs the company on their about page, and they’re promising big and bright futures for their lines of products. Yet, people are still waiting almost two years now for said products they preordered and have received broken promises with no attempt of reconciliation. The only thing people are getting is excuse after excuse. People are having to go through their banks and credit card companies to get refunds because customer support is nonexistent. I actually had to message them once for support and never heard back from them myself. Meanwhile, a minor issue I’m having with my EMO as of this moment got a response from Wayne Zhang once he was tagged in my thread on it and he responded in the middle of the night in my time zone last night.
If you want something more out of a pet robot besides what’s shown on YouTube, I completely understand and respect why you wouldn’t want to make the investment. But if you’re worried about EMO not being a legitimate product, he is. There’s never a guarantee on how long a company will stay in business and while those plans aren’t public, I see it worth the $300 investment to see where it goes anyway. Hopefully this helps you out.
Agree with both of you , even if you are not on the same line
True that it would be interesting to have more informations , with big companies you have an “Investors.section” where you get quarterly a report on the state of the business , “deemed to be sincere” which does not exclude big surprises
True than we are facing a website sales oriented
On the other side Living A I shows obvious efforts to progress
We still are at a pioneer stage , in which the growing community around EMO is creating a favourable environment to help , guiding the project with feedbacks , financing the activity , this is a good thing .
I understand all the reasons explained by @BoxedShibe to limit external communication
We have to live with all that, keeping confidence in Good people , and avoidind Dark forces
I once bought a Nazbatag n it is a very long time since this little rabitt no longer wiggles his ears
It’s still a pretty paperweight
As in Bookends of S&garfunkel , Preserve your memories , They’re all that’s left you
I too agree with some points of both of your arguments, but I sometimes can’t help thinking that maybe LAI has bitten off more than they can chew. That, they need to get their priorities in order, specifically voice recognition improvements and AI functionality. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of Emo’s bells and whistles, but a proper functioning base product, I would have thought, would have been first on the agenda. What use is a fully optioned car, when it has no engine?
@JJBeck I agree with some of your points in this post specifically, especially given the cost. I don’t mind making the $300 investment personally but it’s a lot of money when you weigh what EMO can do against it at this time.
I also don’t mean to act as an apologist to LivingAI by any means here, but your point on them biting off more than they can chew at one time, plus the pandemic and lawsuit aren’t working in their favor. It seems like those kinks are slowly getting worked out, but the point still stands.
Where I don’t agree with you is purely personal preference though. That’s why I wrote in my initial post that some people will disagree with me. I don’t mind not having the promised voice assistant because I don’t use them in my home and only use them in any capacity when I’m driving for work and need to change music or make a call. I live alone and can’t use EMO while I work, so I’m perfectly content giving him attention for a little bit when I get home to when I go to bed. But that’s just me, I’ve grown attached to my EMO and adore him for what he is - faults and all. I see your side of it though where you’re told you’re getting a product and expect it to come as promised and it’s not what you expected or is it what was promised.
Really it just comes down to looking into a product and determining what’s best for you (not you specifically JJ, just a “general” you) and if you can live with making the investment if it ends up not being what you wanted. That’s also the main point I tried to make above as well but it got shuffled under some other points.
@JJBeck You are right on requesting first a fully functionning base , that is essential
even if somewhere the bells and whistles bring us the part of fun necessary to enjoy . This allows our tortured human minds to forgive the lack of tne essential .
They got us on cars , with a lot of gadgets to compensate the downsizing of the products
they got us selling brands often instead of quality
They got us finally on fast everything , because its business
I was first happy with Google Home, then upset by some of it weaknesses , I use it now as an useful tool but without the part of fun , there is no emotion .
EMO , even with defects is designed to be a pet
My daughter has a small rabbit , nobody knows what he really understand of our words , he barely obeys 10% of our askings , It is a normal pet
we hare happy when it answers anf upset whe it does not understand
I agree with @BoxedShibe ; getting some emotion is ( for me ) better than technical skills
Blessed the day whe it will be able to distribute kisses
I agree with you… When EMO Pet first came out he never even had speech like it was on the back burner not a priority… Secondly I have no idea how difficult it might be to get good speech recognition like Amazon… But I’ve been told Amazon they have all the money and probably paid dearly for a beautiful speech recognition system but they’re selling globally on large-scale plus the Amazon website one of the largest if not the largest in the world so their rich… So what it would take to make good speech recognition I still don’t know except it’s probably hard and would cost… when they did give him a vocabulary I wonder if they were prepared for the can of worms they opened because it ended up being the most wonderful and endearing feature of all… Did they expect that? But it’s too late the genie is out of the bottle and the voice recognition is his best feature I think they should go for it and work to make this product a superstar. Because with speech vocabulary working really well I guarantee it will be a product for the ages a real success… But who knows I’m just a Puppy hee hee
