LOOI is a desktop robot with no face of its own. You snap your phone onto it, and the phone becomes the face. Then it charges that same phone, which raises a fair question about which part is actually the robot.
What the LOOI robot is
LOOI from TangibleFuture is a small magnetic base that turns a smartphone into a desktop companion. Snap the phone on and the screen becomes an animated face that senses the room, reads your gestures, and reacts with what the maker calls biomimetic behavior. It started life on Kickstarter and is now shipping.
It runs on ChatGPT, which is the whole pitch and the whole worry
LOOI is powered by ChatGPT, and the product page promises it will chat about "art, philosophy, and trends." That is the appeal and the eye-roll in one. Skeptics were quick to file it under "a gadget bolting ChatGPT onto a trend," and reviewers note the AI is only as deep as the chatbot behind it, with gesture and wake-word recognition that can be hit and miss. On privacy it leans on local processing for its on-device sensing, which is a point in its favor.
Technically just an opinionated charging cradle
Here is where it earns its keep regardless of the AI. LOOI is a 10W wireless charger: it works with MagSafe on iPhone 12 and up, ships with a docking ring for other phones, and supports iOS 17 and later and Android 12 and later. Its own 6000mAh battery is rated around five hours of active use or about a month on standby. Strip away the personality and you have a charging dock that talks back, which is either the future of companionship or the most elaborate phone stand ever shipped. Reviewers warn it can gather dust once the novelty fades.
If you want the companionship without strapping a phone to it, the soft route is Casio's Moflin or the ropet KAMOMO plush, both of which you raise like a pet instead of talking to like an app.
A robot that borrows your phone's face, runs on someone else's AI, and charges the phone it is impersonating. Companionship, outsourced three ways.
