in july 2014 men did not yet know the
dangers of backing just any random kickstarter or indiegogo campaign
and swimming in childlike naivety and blind
optimism over 2500 people backed gebo
a social robot companion that the creators gebo inc
promised would do everything from making video calls to reading bedtime stories
and this was long before the google assistant or amazon echo existed
now for my part it was pretty obvious that gebo was too
ambitious to be anything but an enormous
belly flop onto a bed of hot coals
but coming off of the success of my then recent flaying of the brunton hydrogen
reactor i was looking for a way to up the ante i was looking for something
even dumber to roast so i bought one
three and a half years later my very own gebo finally showed up
was it worth the wait was it worth 900 us dollars
of course not don't be a gebo
this video was brought to you by be quiet! the dark base 700 is extremely
versatile and features RGB led lighting plus a tempered glass side panel window
and more check it out at the link below
looks wise jibo is kind of like the illegitimate love child of pixar's luxo
jr and eva from wally he and jibo is a
he stands 11 inches tall with a glossy plastic finish on a body that is
essentially a stack of rotating blocks that allows him to move with
hey gebo spin around
don't mind if i do amazing naturalness
this is something that the team there did really well and as you can see his
movements are fluid nearly silent and made even more
lifelike by his awareness of his environment
gebo is equipped with six microphones that he uses to orient his face toward
you when you speak to him and we've even seen him turn towards the sound of an
opening door to see who entered the room with the two cameras at the top of his
face one of them is for taking photos and the
other is for depth perception and facial recognition
yes facial recognition gebo can be trained to recognize up to
15 people casually including their names in his responses wishing them happy
birthday or randomly interrupting their lives to rattle off a fun little fact
sometimes it really does feel like he's looking at
you which makes it all the more troubling that there is no way to disable his
microphones or cameras other than just shutting him down which you do by
scrolling to the settings on the touchscreen portion of his face
that tragically isn't OLED giving it a
gray glow that leads many people to see his face as two beady little eyes and a
giant mouth rather than as a single darting and blinking eyeball one
surprising feature is that he has an on-board battery so you or the kids can
unplug him and plop him down wherever you might need him
nice okay but what could you actually need your
chubby robo buddy for well compared to other smart speakers
like google home and amazon echo
shockingly little gebo can't play a youtube video or a
song from spotify he can't record a video or audio clip he can't read you a
bedtime story he can't sing you a lullaby he doesn't support personal
calendars and if you tell him hey gebo repeat after me or to execute your last
command again
um i can't remember what i just said my short-term memory will get better in the
future though okay then i mean at least it can answer
the kinds of questions we used to love firing at siri back in 2011 right what's
the weather outside how far away is the moon
the distance from the earth to the moon is about 374 0006 things like that
well yes and no jibo has limited
resources for finding answers to your skill testing questions including
wikipedia and wolframalpha so that's good but also bing
so he doesn't always get the answers right
hey gebo who is the president
the president is a common title for the head of state and most republics
hey gebo who is the president of the united states of america
the president of the united states is the head of state and head of government
of the united states of america wrong speaking of things jibo can do
but can't do well the news unlike google home which offers a
laundry list of news recordings from major publications gebo only offers news
from the associated press which might even be passable if he
didn't read it out in his own voice according to the associated press
japan's u.n ambassador crowe beshow says the international community must keep
the pressure off so no one wants to listen to a talking computer for more
than like two sentences tops
speaking of speaking i've got kind of mixed feelings about gebo's voice
the sound is more robotic than most of his competitors but his tone and
inflections are sometimes industry-leading in their naturalness
though this is usually only the case when he's giving you a canned answer
bringing us then to jibo's personality which somehow seems to match his
physical form pretty much perfectly he's quirkier than
the more pragmatic assistants that we're used to hey gebo what's your favorite
book i really love instruction manuals there
are so many it's hard to choose one favorite
and i wished him a good morning after 12 o'clock once and he replied sure
i guess it's morning somewhere i may be wrong but i don't think it's morning
but he still doesn't feel like a social companion because even though he
sometimes looks at me while i'm sitting at my desk
and recognizes my face and even says hello to me before i say anything he
doesn't listen for my response or carry out even the most rudimentary
conversations he only responds to commands
so he's the most animated lifelike robot
we've seen yet and yes i'm including those creepy uncanny valley bots like
sophie but the fact is although somehow time missed this
he's almost completely useless especially when you consider the pitch
from the original crowdfunding video i mean yes he does have
some smart home functionality thanks to if this then that integration
but it's very basic and yes in theory
his abilities could expand with over-the-air updates and a developer sdk
that's coming out in the new year but honestly what kind of developers
would be stupid enough to invest their time in a platform with such a small
user base when there are an estimated 20 million amazon echo devices out there
with alexa realistically
it was a good idea the world is headed
towards digital assistance in a big way
but gebo inc tried to do too much with
too little and their only hope for a return on the last few years of their
lives at this point is to be bought out by one of the big guys
just like my only hope for a return on this stupid purchase is to have the
whole team here sign it and put it on ebay in hopes that one of you out there
is an avid collector of ridiculous crowdfunding rubbish
hey gebo twerk
never gets old all right without any ado
man if i was gonna throw away 900 three
years ago i really wish i had bet on bitcoin
on the subject of things that aren't as much of a waste of money as this thing
Corsair's refresh lineup avoid gaming headsets the void pro features
microfiber mesh fabric and memory foam ear cups great build quality with metal
structural components and glass fiber infused plastics 50 millimeter neodymium
drivers with dolby headphone 7.1 surround sound a uni-directional
microphone that cancels ambient noise so you can talk strategically with clarity
and a bunch of different interfaces they've got the special edition the
wireless the usb and the surround version check them out now at the links
below to either amazon or newegg
so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description actually we will
have an ebay link down there i wasn't joking also link down there is our merch
store which has cool shirts like
my shirt not this one this
this is gonna be some some limited edition stuff right here not a
lot of people will own these um oh yeah and there's a link to our
community forum which you should totally join