Tag: CES 2026

Could this AI fuzzball be your new emotional ally?

Posted on by faz_business


fuzozo tuya 1

Stephen Schenck / Android Authority

TL;DR

  • Fuzozo is a sort of half-pet, half-emotional-support-buddy, packed into a Furby-like package.
  • A new upgrade gives Fuzozo cellular connectivity, ensuring access to its AI-based features even when away from home.
  • Over time, users can help their Fuzozo develop a unique personality, and hopefully form an emotional bond.

Life in the modern era can be lonely. For many of us, the pandemic really crystalized just how important it is to maintain meaningful connections, but sometimes that’s easier said than done. If you’ve been struggling to find a fellow human shoulder to lean on, what about the next best thing — an AI-powered emotional partner? This year at CES, Tuya and Robopet are showing off an adorable little fluffball that’s designed to offer just that.

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Meet Fuzozo, an “emotional ally” built to listen to you, sooth you, and maybe even develop an emotional bond over time. Able to communicate not just with spoken language, but also its own “Mao Mao” tongue, the comparisons to Furbies and their Furbish utterances are inevitable. But Fuzozo is a whole lot more than a simple toy meant to entertain.

fuzozo tuya 2

Stephen Schenck / Android Authority

Fuzozo interacts with users through its speaker and microphone, as well as offering tactile feedback, responding to touch with purr-like vibration. Those two eyes are mini displays, and their changing appearance goes a long way towards communicating Fuzozo’s “moods.”

The software side is where Tuya comes in, providing the backbone needed to connect Robopet’s hardware with AI models hosted in the cloud. Fuzozo was first introduced last summer, but with WiFi-only connectivity, limiting its usefulness — having a fuzzy little AI buddy feels a lot less exciting when it loses all its AI-based emotional interactions every time you travel away from home. That’s now being addressed, and at CES this year, Fuzozo is getting a cellular-connected upgrade.

fuzozo tuya 3

Stephen Schenck / Android Authority

Thanks to that, Fuzozo is able to use those AI models to develop a unique personality over time, and you can guide it along the way. In addition to interacting directly with the fuzzy little dude, you can use its connected app to track that progress, as well as share more about yourself through a journaling mode. The idea is to fuel a natural-feeling, growing bond between you and your AI pet.

Fuzozo is available in five different colors, each tied to an elemental “primordial personality key” — but you’re free to steer its personality development from there. And if you happen to bump into a fellow Fuzozo user, you can even tap two of them together to connect over NFC, opening up new possibilities for interaction.

fuzozo tuya 4

Stephen Schenck / Android Authority

This is clearly not going to be for everyone, but for introverts who are looking for a little more connection, Fuzozo might just be the trick to getting them out of their shell. It’s light enough to be clipped onto a bag, and if anything ever does happen to your new digital friend, you can migrate the personality you’ve developed for it over to a new Fuzozo. That means that if you feel like putting in the work, there’s the potential here to forge a long-term emotional bond. Isn’t living in the future wonderfully weird?

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Sorry Tamagotchi Fans, It’s AI Time

Posted on by faz_business


When they said, “Nothing in this world is sacred,” they meant Tamagotchis, too, or at least Tamagotchi rip-offs. While you might remember your virtual pets of yore with all the analog goodness that the ’90s had to offer, this is the year of our lord 2026, and everything has to have AI. Yup, everything.

While the Sweekar, which I saw at CES 2026, isn’t actually a Tamagotchi, it pretty much is in everything but name, and, as you may have already guessed from the words above, it’s centered on AI.

What exactly is that AI doing? Ya know, just normal stuff that allows it to “feel your touch” and remember “your voice, your stories, and your quirks.” It’s time to go deeper with your virtual pets, people. Clicking a few buttons until they inevitably die from neglect isn’t enough. On a hardware level, there’s some cute stuff happening. The egg one kind of vibrates and shakes and grows, which is a fun tactile experience.

Sweekar
© James Pero / Gizmodo

As far as capabilities go, the Sweekar allegedly “needs your love, just like a real pet,” which also means it has moods like happy, angry, sleepy, and something that Takway.Ai, which makes this little toy, is calling “sneaky smile,” which is basically just mischievous? I think? I shudder to think what else it could mean.

Just like a Tamagotchi, the Sweekar has growth cycles that include an “egg stage,” a “baby stage,” a “teen stage,” and an “adult stage.” At each stage, the pet is supposed to gain certain abilities and continually grow and understand more about you and your personality.

More than anything, though, the Sweekar is centered around using AI for memory, so it can remember your name and your favorite color and that time you forgot its birthday. This Tamagotchi’s therapy bill is going to be sizable. The people at Takway.Ai tell me that it’s using a combination of Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT to do that, and that everything you tell the Sweekar is private, though I obviously cannot verify the data practices of a company selling an AI Tamagotchi at CES.

There’s also the whole issue with AI toys having a mind of their own, which means you may want to think twice before you give this little guy to a kid.

If an AI Tamagotchi is really high on your list of things that you absolutely must have then you can eventually throw money at Sweekar’s Kickstarter in March. While there’s no official price right now, the makers of this little virtual pet say it’ll likely debut for between $150 and $200.

Gizmodo is on the ground in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here and find all our coverage here.