This AI Tamagotchi Turns Everyday Objects Into Needy Virtual Pets

Daehwa Kim, a fifth-year PhD student in Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group, has built OATs — Object Agent Twins — tiny E Ink gadgets that turn ordinary household objects into expressive virtual pets. Kim presented the project at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Detroit in early November, where it earned two Honorable Mention awards. The design takes its cue from 1990s Tamagotchi toys, whose digital pets demanded constant care. "We bring this joy of caring from virtual to physical objects," Kim tells WIRED.

The hardware pairs an E Ink display with internal and external sensors tracking moisture, temperature, humidity, light, occupancy, and motion, and the main module costs around $20. Sprites are generated with Google Gemini’s Nano Banana image-generation service, producing suites of emotions tied to sensor states. Owners set everything up through a web portal, naming the OAT and selecting sensors; the app then generates "Positive" and "Negative" behaviors from the object’s name and description — for a plant, triggers might include consistent air temperature or low humidity — all customizable. A USB-C port charges the lithium-ion polymer battery.

Kim’s motivation was to move AI agent interactions off the smartphone screen, arguing that even task-handling agents still demand attention from a mobile device. The goal echoes a broader industry push to give AI a physical body, from the failed Humane Ai Pin to OpenAI’s upcoming hardware with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive and Meta’s Muse Charm, a pocket-sized gadget housing the Muse AI agent expected to launch in December. Cuteness has become a deliberate adoption strategy across these efforts.

In field distribution, Kim found people used OATs three ways: confirming an object is working, such as a coffee machine avatar lighting up when beans start grinding; warning bystanders, like flagging that a 3D printer is releasing toxic fumes; and tracking personal habits, like a dumbbell avatar encouraging regular lifting. Skepticism persists: battery life runs three to four days, or about one day with a sound-level sensor, making this more proof-of-concept than product. Kim has not decided whether to sell kits, despite encouragement to do so. The demo sparked debate about whether it is proper to anthropomorphize AI sprites with human-like emotions, and the project’s gallery — from animated conference badges to a panda avatar for an Owala water bottle — suggests where user experimentation goes next.

Watch for how Kim resolves the battery constraint and whether the anthropomorphizing debate shapes how such ambient agents are designed and marketed.