The emotional track never sleeps.
Author: Lian Ran
Giving Barbie makeup, changing her clothes, designing her style, or talking to Barbie as if she were your best friend, perhaps even imagining a perfect story for her, like finding her a boyfriend and going on vacation or having a wedding together… These are things many girls might have done in their childhood. Although Barbie cannot respond, her very existence is a form of comfort and companionship.
Now, with the maturity of technology, AI can give toys like Barbie "life," allowing them not only to converse with users but also to provide personalized responses based on user needs and emotions.
Barbies are no longer silent toys but "partners" capable of establishing real emotional connections. The interactions that once existed in fantasy are gradually becoming a reality.
This trend is not only reflected in traditional toys but has also expanded into the realm of ACG (Anime, Comic, and Games) culture, forming a new consumer market.
In the Nanjing Road business district of Shanghai, stores filled with ACG merchandise are crowded with Gen Z shoppers selecting plush dolls and figurines—this is one of the hot snapshots of the "ACG economy" at the end of 2024.
With the popularity of ACG culture, ACG merchandise has become an important medium for fans to express their emotions. However, although these products are imbued with emotional value, they are ultimately "silent paper figures," lacking interactivity and making it harder to meet users' needs for deep emotional companionship.
What users truly need is not just a collectible character but a "friend" they can interact with, communicate with, and even have by their side.
ACG + AI, intelligent ACG companionship has thus emerged.
AI ACG: Letting Emotions Flow
The term "ACG" actually refers to a collective name for ACG cultural derivative products, encompassing various items such as figurines, badges, posters, cards, keychains, standees, and dolls. This name is derived from the transliteration of the English word "goods." Since these products are not only affordable but also have a wide consumer base, they have gradually evolved into a form of social currency among young people.
The traditional ACG market features a variety of product forms: lightweight badges and acrylic keychains emphasize portability, while heavier plush dolls and figurines focus on aesthetics, but they are all "silent partners" that can only output emotions unidirectionally.
The essence of the ACG economy is emotional economy; however, current interactions remain one-sided, and users yearn for a two-way emotional flow.
Yet, users' emotional dependence on ACG characters is much stronger than it appears on the surface. Many users take their ACG merchandise out with them, whether dining, shopping, or traveling, and often take photos with their ACG items to interact.
According to Guo Yijie, founder of Neurobo, this demand signals a strong need for technological upgrades in traditional ACG products. Neurobo aims to accurately capture this segment of ACG users—based on their deep emotional ties to characters, using intelligent ACG to help virtual characters deeply integrate with real life.
Neurobo (Yizhi Interaction) is a startup based in Shanghai, backed by investment from Qiji Chuangtan, founded by former Baidu president and Microsoft vice president Dr. Lu Qi. The core team members come from prestigious universities such as Tsinghua University and Tsukuba University in Japan, dedicated to combining LLM (Large Language Model) with real-world data, allowing ACG users to turn "ACG" into a tangible emotional companion that is always accessible.
Neurobo is building a "ACG nurturing" platform centered on situationally aware interaction, where nurturing refers to the process of enabling virtual characters to gradually understand and respond to user emotions through continuous interaction with physical ACG products.
Initially, Neurobo launched a tool for "squeezing" intelligent ACG, allowing users to design and edit interactions with their favorite virtual characters in different contexts through the platform.
Users interact with Neurobo's intelligent ACG｜Image source: Neurobo
At the same time, the team is also developing a hardware product related to "smart doll bags." Ordinary "doll bags" are simply used to carry and protect dolls, but Neurobo's "doll bag" is different. Relying on its built-in various sensors, microphones, speakers, and its self-developed situationally aware interaction system, it allows users to interact deeply with characters in the physical world, including the "doll" perceiving users' actions and emotions and adjusting the character's behavior in response to this information.
Users can feel the character's emotional responses through interactions with the "doll bag," just like communicating with a real friend.
For example, in product testing, a user took Neurobo's "doll bag" out, and the "doll bag" recognized that there was a hot pot restaurant nearby that the user liked, prompting the user to ask if they wanted to go eat there. This level of thoughtfulness is no different from that of a real friend!
The "doll bag" under development is not the final form; the team is still iterating and testing｜Image source: Neurobo
As data from real-world scenarios accumulates, Neurobo can enable ACG products to gradually "understand" users' behaviors, emotions, and social habits, thus achieving true deep companionship. Neurobo's innovative attempts address the gap between virtual characters and the real world, and through technological means, these characters gain stronger emotional connectivity.
By facilitating deep interactions between ACG characters and the real world, Neurobo's core philosophy is to endow these virtual characters with companionship capabilities similar to real partners.
Whether through the interactive creation process of "squeezing" ACG or the deep interactions realized through hardware, Neurobo is attempting to break the boundaries of traditional ACG products, striving to make virtual characters a true part of life, providing users with a more personalized and emotional companionship experience.
New Opportunities in AI + Hardware
In the recently concluded 2024, the AI hardware sector has clearly become a battleground for tech giants and innovative players.
In the eyewear field, companies like Meta, Rokid, Baidu, and Shanjite Technology have launched new products or announced progress, giving eyewear a new lease on life with AI; in the headphone sector, ByteDance has introduced OlaFriend, which hides a "soulmate" within the headphones.
At the CES 2025 exhibition, an "emotional technology revolution" erupted: Yukai Engineering's cat-ear robot Mirumi uses cuteness to heal loneliness, Nékojita FuFu's bionic pets can sense their owner's emotional fluctuations, and the Romy companion robot, designed specifically for the elderly, redefines the "filial piety economy" with AI.
Behind all this is the multimodal interaction revolution sparked by large model technology. The combination of AI and hardware is no longer just an embellishment but has become a genuine necessity for enhancing experiences and opening new markets, making AI + hardware one of the main opportunities for AI implementation in 2025.
According to industry estimates, the global AI hardware market size was $53.71 billion in 2024, and it is expected to reach $473.53 billion by 2033, with companion products growing at an annual rate of 25%. The door to a hundred billion emotional economy market is opening.
On one hand, the demand for emotional companionship is only increasing, and AI technology is timely, providing new solutions to meet this demand. By endowing toys and other products with intelligent interactive capabilities, they become emotional outlets for people, filling emotional voids.
On the other hand, ACG culture has a vast fan base globally, with its virtual characters and story content holding high emotional value and commercial potential.
Cleverly combining AI with ACG not only creates more immersive and interactive experiences but also enhances user satisfaction and stickiness through personalized customization, tightening the connection between fans and virtual characters.
Currently, large model applications are mainly concentrated online—according to Sensor Tower data, the emotional companionship app Character AI reached 22 million monthly active users in 2024, with downloads nearing 19 million.
However, the industry has already keenly realized that combining large models with hardware will unleash even greater potential—another data point indicates that in 2024, the AI + toy sector completed approximately 5 to 10 million units in shipments, with this year's shipment target expected to exceed 50 million units (including partners), showing rapid growth and broad market prospects.
As market demand continues to expand, AI + toys is expected to become a key opportunity for the implementation of large model technology, but it also faces corresponding challenges.
First, the complexity of technology and the difficulty of hardware implementation pose significant challenges. From the integration of AI models to hardware devices, each link requires meticulous technical research and continuous optimization to ensure users have a smooth experience.
To enable relatively small hardware to achieve multimodal interaction, a balance must be found between computing power and power consumption. For example, plush dolls have limited internal space, which may require custom chips for sensors, and the models need further lightweight processing.
Additionally, the accuracy of situational awareness directly determines user experience. For users to truly feel emotional interactions with virtual characters, the system needs to accurately understand and respond to users' behaviors and needs.
How to attract a broader user base and help them accept and integrate into this interaction model based on virtual characters is also a significant challenge for companies like Neurobo. While the audience for ACG culture is considerable, guiding these users from traditional collecting to interaction still requires patience and more innovation.
With technological advancements, especially in AI development, new possibilities for the consumption model of ACG culture are emerging. AI can help users create content and products that meet their preferences under highly personalized demands, customizing characters and interaction modes, while further strengthening emotional resonance and spiritual satisfaction.
In the future, AI + toys may encompass a vast commercial space filled with emotional value and personalized experiences.
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