Despite robotics’ flashy appeal, Anki shows it’s hard to succeed

The commercial chasm between Artificial Intelligence and physical robots is growing deeper every day — and the technology industry has chosen a winner. 

In a massive convention center in Dubai, attendees of the AI Everything summit checked out booths from the likes of Google and Huawei, played with robots shooting hoops, and lined up for a Microsoft AI to determine the ice cream flavor they should have based on their mood. Based on social media from the summit, the message was clear: AI in all its forms is the future, the future is dope, and the future is here!

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Silicon Valley, the leaders of a celebrated and by all accounts innovative robotics company — once hyped by Apple — announced to employees that it was shutting its doors for good. On April 29, Recode reported that Anki was laying off its employees and shutting down for good. Despite having raised $200 million in the past, getting a debut on the Apple WWDC stage, and generating positive reviews for its playful robots, it was unable to secure the funding it needed to succeed long term.

“Despite our past successes, we pursued every financial avenue to fund our future product development and expand on our platforms,” a company spokesperson told Recode. “A significant financial deal at a late stage fell through with a strategic investor and we were not able to reach an agreement. We’re doing our best to take care of every single employee and their families, and our management team continues to explore all options available.”

Roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University founded Anki, with ambitions to marry useful AI with personality-driven devices. Anki had success with its line of race car toys, and it upped the ante with its cute, smart, robotic companion toy, Cozmo. But it faltered with the 2018 debut of its Vector, which scored big on personality, but couldn’t compete with the skillsets of devices like Amazon’s Echo, powered by Alexa. As one Mashable reviewer put it at the time, “Vector’s purpose is a little unclear… [its] personality stands out more than any of the functions it can perform.”

Anki is not alone in its struggle to marry social robots with utility. The similarly cute Jibo robot announced to bewildered owners that it would cease to function in March. 

These tales of un-materialized robotic commercial ambition, set against the background of the Middle Eastern AI bonanza, tell a bigger story about what’s going on with AI. 

It’s clear that AI has found a huge and increasing place in our lives — but mostly through ways that look nothing like the Jetsons. Hover over an email in Gmail, and Google will tell you it’s marked that email as important thanks to “Google Magic”; Take a photo with your sophisticated smartphone camera, and AI is at work to optimize the image; search for anything, on any social platform or search engine, and AI will help the platform deliver the most relevant search results for you. With companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook amassing vast stores of human knowledge, and data about us all, AI has become an indelible part of our lives.

So, why hasn’t that translated to actual robots? Companies like Boston Dynamics continue to go viral with their creepy animalistic devices, but it’s not clear what commercial use there is for them. Even the AI behind devices like the Echo or Google Home have yet to convince consumers that they play a crucial role in their lives; how many of us have purchased an Echo, only to unplug and abandon it, or at the best, mostly use it to turn some lights on and off?

The trouble that smart device companies have finding a foothold in the market is symptomatic of the trouble with hardware as a whole. In my previous reporting on the fire sale of Eero to Amazon, I learned that succeeding in hardware is frankly harder than ever. In order for a company that produces a physical product to be commercially viable, it has to also have software applications that continue to churn out revenue from customers even after they’ve bought the initial product. In addition, the device has to prove so useful — so essential — that consumers instantly recognize its value, and it achieves “can’t live without it” status. At the moment, that is the bar for hardware companies, and it is incredibly high.

Despite the Dubai convention hall alleys stacked with cute, fun, flashy robots, the real-life power of AI often lies where normal people can’t see it. If you don’t take the time to hover your “Important” email in Gmail, you might never know that the “Google Magic” was even there.