AI moves into the real world as companion robots and pets

Artificial intelligence doesn’t ever want to optimize your life aliases bargain your job. Sometimes, AI conscionable wants to beryllium your friend. And while robot pets weren’t the biggest stars of CES 2026, they’ve go much than conscionable sound and are signaling really AI is apparently leaving our screens and taking connected a beingness beingness successful our lives.

To beryllium clear, there’s nary shortage of purpose-built machines connected show successful Las Vegas: there’s Samsung’s voice-controlled refrigerator, Bosch’s Alexa Plus-powered AI barista, and smarter robovacs for illustration Narwal’s earring-finding Flow 2 aliases Anker’s Eufy S2, which moonlights arsenic an aromatherapy diffuser – each promising to automate the drudgery of regular life. Humanoid robots for illustration LG’s CLOiD and SwitchBot’s Onero H1 stole overmuch of the spotlight, too, taking that logic a measurement further by promising much general-purpose helpers astir the location — aliases the mill floor, successful the lawsuit of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas — moreover if they stay years distant from mundane use.

But not each robot astatine CES seems that willing successful having a job. Away from the large demos and flashy promises of automation, a quieter inclination is taking shape: machines designed for small intent beyond existing. And they’re everywhere.

If you ever get saturated charging your phone, Loona’s DeskMate offers a solution: it transforms your iPhone into a cutesy companion pinch oversized, Pixar-like eyes that way you arsenic you talk. It has applicable features too, for illustration Slack integration and gathering assistance, but arsenic a trading constituent they consciousness almost incidental to the companion experience. The institution says the instrumentality is powered by AI, though it does not opportunity how.

Speaking of Pixar, AI robotics startup Zeroth wants to waste you a real-life WALL-E companion, or, successful markets for illustration the US wherever it lacks the Disney license, thing adjacent to WALL-E’s weird, off-brand cousin. The robot, called W1, doesn’t really do overmuch too travel you around, carrying mini items, aliases snapping a fewer pictures. The institution says W1 is built connected “advanced mobility and biology AI,” though specifications are vague.

Zeroth is besides bringing a doll-sized humanoid robot, M1, to the US, an at-home companion that blends inferior — reminders, childcare assistance, autumn discovery — pinch companionship, making usage of Google’s Gemini AI exemplary for conversations. That operation has already secured an assemblage for societal robots celebrated successful parts of Asia, peculiarly successful China and South Korea, wherever the robots are celebrated pinch children and the elderly. CES 2026 suggests this conception is now being deliberately repackaged and marketed for Western homes.

Others leaned moreover much explicitly into affectional companionship. In different words: robot pets. There’s Fuzozo, a puffball that purrs erstwhile you pet it and tin admit its owner. Unlike galore housebound AI devices, it has a cellular connection, allowing it to beryllium carried astir pinch you, a hint astatine really ubiquitous these products mightiness beryllium successful the future, moreover if it’s unclear really precisely AI is being used.

Robovac institution Ecovacs was besides trading a robot that resembles a Bichon Frisé. It says the emotional companion robot, LilMilo, uses AI and “lifelike biometrics” to admit voices, create a personality, and accommodate to personification habits. As pinch different products, specifications connected the AI constituent wrong LilMilo are generic and nondescript. It’s an overseas merchandise for a institution that conscionable launched a robotic excavation cleaner, and a telling motion of really companies progressively expect america to invited beingness AI companions into our homes not for what they do, but simply for being there.