TERRIBLE $900 Party Trick – Jibo Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,526 words · ~7 min read
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in july 2014 men did not yet know the
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dangers of backing just any random kickstarter or indiegogo campaign
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and swimming in childlike naivety and blind
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optimism over 2500 people backed gebo
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a social robot companion that the creators gebo inc
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promised would do everything from making video calls to reading bedtime stories
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and this was long before the google assistant or amazon echo existed
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now for my part it was pretty obvious that gebo was too
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ambitious to be anything but an enormous
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belly flop onto a bed of hot coals
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but coming off of the success of my then recent flaying of the brunton hydrogen
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reactor i was looking for a way to up the ante i was looking for something
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even dumber to roast so i bought one
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three and a half years later my very own gebo finally showed up
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was it worth the wait was it worth 900 us dollars
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of course not don't be a gebo
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and more check it out at the link below
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looks wise jibo is kind of like the illegitimate love child of pixar's luxo
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jr and eva from wally he and jibo is a
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he stands 11 inches tall with a glossy plastic finish on a body that is
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essentially a stack of rotating blocks that allows him to move with
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hey gebo spin around
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don't mind if i do amazing naturalness
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this is something that the team there did really well and as you can see his
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movements are fluid nearly silent and made even more
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lifelike by his awareness of his environment
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gebo is equipped with six microphones that he uses to orient his face toward
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you when you speak to him and we've even seen him turn towards the sound of an
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opening door to see who entered the room with the two cameras at the top of his
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face one of them is for taking photos and the
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other is for depth perception and facial recognition
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yes facial recognition gebo can be trained to recognize up to
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15 people casually including their names in his responses wishing them happy
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birthday or randomly interrupting their lives to rattle off a fun little fact
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sometimes it really does feel like he's looking at
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you which makes it all the more troubling that there is no way to disable his
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microphones or cameras other than just shutting him down which you do by
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scrolling to the settings on the touchscreen portion of his face
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that tragically isn't OLED giving it a
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gray glow that leads many people to see his face as two beady little eyes and a
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giant mouth rather than as a single darting and blinking eyeball one
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surprising feature is that he has an on-board battery so you or the kids can
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unplug him and plop him down wherever you might need him
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nice okay but what could you actually need your
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chubby robo buddy for well compared to other smart speakers
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like google home and amazon echo
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shockingly little gebo can't play a youtube video or a
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song from spotify he can't record a video or audio clip he can't read you a
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bedtime story he can't sing you a lullaby he doesn't support personal
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calendars and if you tell him hey gebo repeat after me or to execute your last
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command again
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um i can't remember what i just said my short-term memory will get better in the
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future though okay then i mean at least it can answer
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the kinds of questions we used to love firing at siri back in 2011 right what's
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the weather outside how far away is the moon
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the distance from the earth to the moon is about 374 0006 things like that
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well yes and no jibo has limited
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resources for finding answers to your skill testing questions including
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wikipedia and wolframalpha so that's good but also bing
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so he doesn't always get the answers right
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hey gebo who is the president
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the president is a common title for the head of state and most republics
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hey gebo who is the president of the united states of america
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the president of the united states is the head of state and head of government
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of the united states of america wrong speaking of things jibo can do
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but can't do well the news unlike google home which offers a
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laundry list of news recordings from major publications gebo only offers news
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from the associated press which might even be passable if he
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didn't read it out in his own voice according to the associated press
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japan's u.n ambassador crowe beshow says the international community must keep
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the pressure off so no one wants to listen to a talking computer for more
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than like two sentences tops
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speaking of speaking i've got kind of mixed feelings about gebo's voice
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the sound is more robotic than most of his competitors but his tone and
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inflections are sometimes industry-leading in their naturalness
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though this is usually only the case when he's giving you a canned answer
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bringing us then to jibo's personality which somehow seems to match his
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physical form pretty much perfectly he's quirkier than
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the more pragmatic assistants that we're used to hey gebo what's your favorite
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book i really love instruction manuals there
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are so many it's hard to choose one favorite
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and i wished him a good morning after 12 o'clock once and he replied sure
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i guess it's morning somewhere i may be wrong but i don't think it's morning
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but he still doesn't feel like a social companion because even though he
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sometimes looks at me while i'm sitting at my desk
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and recognizes my face and even says hello to me before i say anything he
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doesn't listen for my response or carry out even the most rudimentary
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conversations he only responds to commands
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so he's the most animated lifelike robot
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we've seen yet and yes i'm including those creepy uncanny valley bots like
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sophie but the fact is although somehow time missed this
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he's almost completely useless especially when you consider the pitch
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from the original crowdfunding video i mean yes he does have
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some smart home functionality thanks to if this then that integration
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but it's very basic and yes in theory
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his abilities could expand with over-the-air updates and a developer sdk
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that's coming out in the new year but honestly what kind of developers
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would be stupid enough to invest their time in a platform with such a small
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user base when there are an estimated 20 million amazon echo devices out there
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with alexa realistically
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it was a good idea the world is headed
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towards digital assistance in a big way
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but gebo inc tried to do too much with
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too little and their only hope for a return on the last few years of their
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lives at this point is to be bought out by one of the big guys
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just like my only hope for a return on this stupid purchase is to have the
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whole team here sign it and put it on ebay in hopes that one of you out there
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is an avid collector of ridiculous crowdfunding rubbish
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hey gebo twerk
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never gets old all right without any ado
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man if i was gonna throw away 900 three
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years ago i really wish i had bet on bitcoin
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on the subject of things that aren't as much of a waste of money as this thing
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Corsair's refresh lineup avoid gaming headsets the void pro features
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microfiber mesh fabric and memory foam ear cups great build quality with metal
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structural components and glass fiber infused plastics 50 millimeter neodymium
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drivers with dolby headphone 7.1 surround sound a uni-directional
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microphone that cancels ambient noise so you can talk strategically with clarity
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and a bunch of different interfaces they've got the special edition the
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wireless the usb and the surround version check them out now at the links
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below to either amazon or newegg
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
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it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to
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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description actually we will
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have an ebay link down there i wasn't joking also link down there is our merch
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store which has cool shirts like
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my shirt not this one this
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this is gonna be some some limited edition stuff right here not a
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lot of people will own these um oh yeah and there's a link to our
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community forum which you should totally join