Move over, Mi-Mo and Mirumi: A new “cutest robot at CES” contender has entered the Pepcom floor.
Loona is an AI petbot powered by ChatGPT that charmed the hell out of the packed media showcase in Las Vegas Monday night, zooming up to bystanders to say hi, react to chatter, pretend it’s in a wind tunnel, and play fetch with a ball. It’s one of two flagship products from KEYi Tech, a Chinese consumer robotics company — the other being a modular, programmable kit called Clicbot — which calls Loona the “ideal companion for families with kids.”
Standing about a foot tall, Loona has a curved white body with two wheeled arms, a “head” flanked by animated ears, and an expressive “face” display with a camera right below it. The KEYi website says its lead designer created it with his childhood pets and Pixar characters in mind, and that vision seems perfectly executed. …