What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him that when he was anxious, he could calm down by exhaling through his lips so that he buzzed like a bee. They practiced breathing like dragons to manage feeling mad and sniffing like bunnies to boost his energy. But in the six years they’ve known each other, Moxie’s changed.

She doesn’t talk anymore about her home or do their animal breathing. Now, she watches Xander play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animal collection. During a recent visit to his New York apartment, I watched Xander, who is 10 years old and neurodivergent, introduce Moxie to a stuffed Chef Toad and Goomba from Super Mario Bros., then to Brocollo and Apple from Animal Crossing.

Then he got stuck on a round, froglike creature with bug eyes and two feet. He’s from Pikmin,” Xander said, referencing another Nintendo video game. At first, Moxie suggested this was Yellow Pikmin.

Xander said no, this is the enemy, the red one with white dots. Her cylindrical body can turn around and bend forward and backward. Her round head culminates in a little onion-dome swirl, beneath which a wide screen displays big green eyes, eyebrows, and a small mouth.

She lifts and flaps her flipper-like arms for emphasis or to show excitement. She’s one of an increasing number of artificial-intelligence-powered devices now marketed as interactive playmates for children. The musician Grimes helped launch an AI-powered plushie called Grok (no formal relation to the xAI chatbot owned by her ex Elon Musk) with the company Curio, which also sells similar playmates like Grem and Gabbo, and Mattel has promised it’s creating OpenAI-enabled Barbies.

And that’s just in the US; one report estimates that in China this sector is among the fastest growing in consumer AI. Moxie, though, belongs to a particular subset of these playful robots whose makers claim they can assist neurodivergent children by providing connection and helping the kids practice making eye contact, taking turns, and other social skills that are usually learned from therapists. These toys are backed by research showing that robots could help in ways people can’t.