First, a Leo-sized cheers to our new favorite inventor.
That inventor is NYU student Abhishek Singh, who recently completed his rather fun graduate thesis: a desktop robotic assistant named Peeqo that only responds with GIFs. “Think of him as the love child of Amazon Echo and a Disney character,” Singh says.
The slinky-style robot — which has a forward-facing camera — responds to voice commands, but only returns answers in GIFs. Singh said he gave him a personality, so “sometimes his responses can be a little spunky.” And he listens: in one funny interaction, Peeqo is told not to let his inventor go on Reddit. When he does, Peeqo (on its own) displays an angry cartoon GIF.
Good news for hobbyists: Singh open-sourced the project (see below), meaning you, too, can build a spunky, GIF-fluent virtual assistant.
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