Newshot AI Tamagotchi Arrives: Everyday Objects Instantly Become Virtual Pets That Need Care
IT之家 November 15 news — Forgotten to water the plants at home? This time, what you see may not be gradually yellowing leaves, but a plant-shaped pet displayed on a small screen. It looks dejected and aggrieved, as if reminding you to hurry and pick up the watering can. And when you pour water into the soil, the little pet on the screen immediately becomes excited again.
This is exactly the design concept of OATs (Object Agent Twins). It is a miniature AI agent system for everyday household objects that, through small e-ink displays, gives various physical objects virtual avatars capable of expressing emotions.
The technology was developed by 金大华 (Daehwa Kim), a fifth-year PhD student in Carnegie Mellon University's Future Interfaces Group. In early November, she presented the project at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2026) held in Detroit. The conference brings together experts from academia and industry to discuss the development of human-computer interaction technology, and 金大华 received two honorable mentions for it.
If you remember the Tamagotchi that swept the world in the 1990s, it is not hard to understand the design approach of OATs. This egg-shaped electronic toy contains a virtual pet, and users must care for it in real time to keep it growing healthily.
金大华 hopes to bring a similar experience from the virtual world into physical objects in real life.
In an interview with WIRED, she said: "We want to extend the joy of caring for a virtual pet to objects in the real world."
Quite a few people have suggested she sell OATs kits online, but 金大华 has not yet decided whether to develop it into a commercial business.
金大华 believes that people today stare at phone screens all day long, and even though AI agents were originally designed to handle various tasks on users' behalf, they still need to interact with users through phone screens. OATs tries to change this model, taking interaction between people and AI out of the phone and into real life.
Giving AI a cute appearance
Giving AI a physical form is nothing new. As tech companies race to find the so-called "next-generation smartphone," AI hardware in various forms keeps emerging.
Among them are products that have already failed, such as the Humane Ai Pin, as well as an upcoming hardware product developed by former Apple star designer Jonathan Ive (Jony Ive) in collaboration with OpenAI, and Meta's Muse Charm, a pocket-sized device with Meta's much-watched Muse AI agent built in, expected to launch in December.
Notably, more and more tech companies are beginning to use "cuteness" as an important strategy to drive product adoption, hoping that a friendlier and more emotionally relatable appearance will lower the threshold for users to accept AI technology.
OATs is equipped with an e-ink display and connects to internal and external sensors that can monitor information such as humidity, temperature, air humidity, light, whether an object is being used, and motion status. Its hardware cost is relatively low, with the main module priced at about $20 (IT之家 note: approximately 133.8 yuan at current exchange rates).
The virtual character on the screen is created using Google's Nano Banana image generation service under Gemini. Based on the data collected by the sensors, the system generates a series of images of the character in different emotions to correspond to the object's current state.
Users can complete setup through a web platform, name their OATs, and choose which sensors to use according to the connected object.
The web app also automatically generates trigger conditions representing positive and negative states based on the object's name and description.
For example, if OATs is installed on a potted plant, the system will set corresponding conditions based on the plant's specific needs. If the plant prefers a dry environment, then stable air temperature and low humidity might be set as trigger conditions for a positive state. Of course, users can also adjust these behavior rules themselves according to the specific type of plant.
Its application scenarios can even be very simple. If you want to use your skateboard more often, you can install OATs on the skateboard. If the system does not detect any movement of the skateboard for several consecutive days, the virtual character on the screen will show a sad, lonely expression. Seeing it like that, could you still bear to leave the skateboard idle in the corner?
金大华 said: "These originally inanimate objects can thus become more expressive."
When you step on the skateboard and start moving, the virtual character on the screen becomes happy and makes various fun expressions.
However, OATs currently has one obvious shortcoming: very short battery life, which also shows that at this stage it is more a proof-of-concept technology than a mature consumer product.
Under normal circumstances, OATs lasts about 3 to 4 days. If a sound sensor is also connected, battery life drops to about 1 day. The device has a USB-C port, through which its built-in lithium-ion polymer battery can be charged.
Some use it to remind themselves to exercise, others to monitor device status
金大华 distributed OATs devices to many people and found that users mainly use it in three different ways.
The first way is to monitor whether an object is being used. For example, someone installed OATs on a coffee machine. When the coffee machine starts grinding coffee beans, the sensor detects that the device has started, and the virtual character on the screen becomes excited.
The second way is to alert people around an object. For example, 3D printers may release toxic fumes during operation. Installing OATs on a printer can use the virtual character's state to alert people nearby that the device is currently running.
The third way is to help users track their own behavioral habits. Someone installed OATs on a dumbbell to record how often they lift weights. To avoid disappointing the AI pet, this user actively pushes themselves to keep exercising and maintain a regular exercise habit.
The OATs demonstration at the symposium was quite popular. 金大华 also turned the demonstration event into a creative competition, letting participants compete over who could come up with the most interesting object pairing scheme.
Her website also has a dedicated showcase area featuring various virtual characters created by participants, including an animation-style conference badge and a panda character designed for an Owala water bottle.
Is giving AI emotions a good way to bring people and technology closer?
However, the demonstration also sparked a rather controversial discussion: should AI be given human-like personalities and emotions so that users can form emotional connections with these virtual characters?
In fact, this issue has already drawn attention in the AI industry.
Tech companies often use anthropomorphic language to describe chatbot behavior, for example using "hallucination" to describe the phenomenon of AI generating incorrect information. This summer, Anthropic also announced a feature called "Dreaming," which lets AI agents organize and clean up their local memories in the background.
Researchers worry that such anthropomorphic expressions may distort people's moral judgments about AI, lead users to over-trust these tools, and even make them mistakenly believe that AI truly possesses human consciousness or emotions.
金大华 said this is why OATs' interactive functions are strictly limited to emotional expression and e-ink display, with no more complex interaction capabilities designed.
She said: "Anthropomorphism is indeed very useful in some ways, for example in helping people change their behavioral habits. People give their cars names, and they give their bicycles names, but I rarely see anyone give their iPhone a name."
金大华 believes that future computing devices will enable humans to build closer relationships with AI, but while promoting the development of such relationships, caution must also be maintained to avoid abuse of anthropomorphic design.
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