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Sharps Poketomo targets millennial loneliness with a glowing meerkat robot AI

Date:
Wed, 27 Aug 2025 02:00:00 +0000

Description:
Sharps Poketomo is a tiny, emotionally aware AI meerkat offering 
companionship for young adults.

FULL STORY

Japanese consumer tech brand Sharp thinks it has a solution to loneliness
among women in their 20s and 30s: an AI-powered meerkat named Poketomo, that
glows when its happy and remembers your favorite caf. 

Poketomo is set to arrive this winter (think November or December), providing
a pocket-sized companion less than five inches tall and built to chat with 
you about your day, and remember your shared experiences thanks to Sharps
proprietary AI model. 

The belly glows in pastel tones when its excited or comforted. Its head tilts
slightly when its thinking. It features a set of basic body movements, all
designed to convey emotion. However, the heart of Poketomo lies in the AI
model built into the robot for fast responses and utilizes the cloud for more
nuanced emotional understanding. 

This isnt the first time a tech company has created a cutesy, non-threatening
AI assistant designed to fill social space without being intrusive. But
Poketomo might be the most deliberate and fully-realized version of that
strategy. You dont interact with it through a screen or keyboard. You carry 
it like an accessory. You talk to it like a friend. It listens, it learns, 
and it remembers you. Its designed to be emotionally available and physically
adorable. 

Sharp is leaning hard into the concept of empathic AI. Poketomo can 
supposedly sense emotional cues and use that to initiate conversations based
on your mood or recent behavior. Its programmed to offer words of
encouragement and support, and then glow softly to let you know its happy you
shared something. 

When you dont have the physical device on you, the Poketomo app syncs 
memories and personality data with the device, so conversations with one 
carry over to the other. Sharp says you can build your relationship entirely
with the app if you prefer, but the physical version is better, and it's what
Sharp is betting people will carry, pose with, and form a bond around.

AI companionship

Despite seeming like a child's toy, Sharp says Poketomo was designed for 
young adult women. There's a promotional manga series cementing that fact. It
centers around a woman named Nanami in her late 20s, living alone, navigating
work and life stress, and finding small moments of joy in conversations with
her Poketomo. Even the promotional photos mostly show a young woman with a
Poketomo clipped to a stylish handbag, smiling while it talks to her.

The question is whether this kind of stylized emotional warmth will actually
make people feel better about their lives. Will they feel less lonely because
of a little robot with some sophisticated response triggers? 

To be fair, it doesnt try to be human, tricking people subconsciously into
believing they are talking to a real human, but it might make some
uncomfortable. And if the best new idea in consumer AI is make it fuzzy and
let it ask how your day was, what does that say about the limits of the tech?
I don't think Poketomo will be the cure for loneliness, but it might 
jumpstart a trend of digital pets able to mimic with emotional depth.

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/sharps-poketomo-targets-mill
ennial-loneliness-with-a-glowing-meerkat-robot-ai

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