Startup OKA, or One Kind Artifact, launched Mori on Thursday — a robot lamp around 30 cm tall that lifts its head, tracks people around it and plays nature soundscapes. It deliberately takes no voice commands and controls no smart home. The Founder's Edition costs $649, in a few hundred units.
Key takeaways
- Founder's Edition: $649, two-year warranty plus two years of subscription
- Standard version: $849, $799 on preorder — subscription not included
- Subscription $17 a month or $80 a year, soundscapes need it
- Several local language models on-device, Wi-Fi only for firmware updates
- It forgets anyone unseen for a month
| Variant | Price | Subscription included |
|---|---|---|
| Founder's Edition | $649 | two years |
| Standard version | $849, $799 on preorder | no |
| Subscription on its own | $17 a month or $80 a year | — |
What Mori does, and does not
A diamond-shaped nose hides the camera, with microphones in the body. The robot lifts its head, shows animated eyes, follows people with its face and makes sounds somewhere between birdsong and R2-D2. It glows in colours drawn from rain, forest, fire and wind, and dances to music.
The list of omissions is a design decision. Unlike an Amazon Echo, Mori is no assistant: it will not turn on your lights, queue a track or answer a weather question. Breathing exercises are free, the soundscapes need a subscription.
Attentive Intelligence and on-device processing
The company calls its AI layer "Attentive Intelligence". Several local language models read the room's context from camera and microphone, then decide when to engage and when to stay quiet. During a phone call or an argument it goes silent. After two hours of phone scrolling it tries to get attention and offer a break.
Raw images and audio are processed locally and discarded. Facial feature data, needed to tell a resident from a guest, is encrypted on the device. The camera switches off when the robot retracts, the microphone after a double tap.
Why it matters
Chris Harrison of Carnegie Mellon notes that Sony's Aibo from 1999 lacked what today's AI provides — an understanding of human reactions and context. So Mori tests a business model rather than a technology: whether anyone will pay the price of two smartphones for a device with no utility functions, plus a subscription for sounds. The answer says more about the home-companion market than another humanoid demo.
What's next
- Hua Wang, OKA's CEO, names Oura Ring data, a Spotify account and voice commands as possible additions
- Mori is the first of five "artifacts" the company has planned
