Do you remember that scene in Blade Runner 2049 where a giant, holographic Ana De Armas tells Ryan Gosling he looks lonely? Well, I certainly do. The team behind this head-turning Kickstarter project may do as well, taking the dream of a giant, holographic lady and making her pocket-sized—not to mention anime-themed, of course.
The Dipal D1 is a teeny tiny pod featuring a curved touch screen. Projected inside the pod is a virtual AI assistant wrapped in a 3D anime-style presentation, though you can also take it on the go by popping the pint-sized projection onto your phone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the project exceeded its approximately $9,700 funding goal within minutes of debuting on Kickstarter.
This isn't the first time we've covered a tiny anime girl cyberprison, so what makes this one different? Rather than projecting the anime girl onto a flat display stack like SyBran's CODE27 Character Livehouse, Dipal attempts something more immersive with its curved OLED display. For instance, smart eye tracking not only allows for more detailed 3D backgrounds, but also dynamically shifts your tiny anime girl around depending on where you're peering at her from.
In development since late 2022, the cheapest pod you can pick up is the Dipal D1se which features a similar, flat display stack. To get this as a backer reward minus the cool, mech-inspired spider-leg base, you'd still be putting down a pledge of $379. For the flagship D1 pod with the curved OLED screen, plus the base, you'd need to pledge $618. At the time of writing, the Kickstarter is well on its way to exceeding $130,000 in total crowdfunding—which equates to about 210 state of the art anime girl cyberprisons.
The D1 also allows you to import a number of 3D assets that either change the appearance of Pearl's surroundings or overhauls your tiny anime girl's look entirely. Tools for editing the 'personality' of your AI assistant are also in development, with proper cringey copy leveraging a number of anime archetypes in order to explain these features; part of the Kickstarter sell reads, "Want a nurturing oneesan who spoils you rotten? A tsundere classmate to roast you into being productive? A sweet childhood friend who’s always believed in you? Or maybe you're into the hyper genki girl who bounces off the walls with pure serotonin, or the yandere who’s... a little too into you? [...] Senpai, it’s time to live the slice-of-life fantasy you’ve always dreamed of."
The full Kickstarter trailer is slickly produced, selling the fantasy of a digital companion that falls somewhere between a personal assistant who remembers what you forget and an emotional support AI that you can directly customise. While it is a little funny that you can sync your tiny anime wife to your smart home and teach her dance moves, there's definitely a skeeviness I'm struggling to look past.
For instance, how does Dipal choose to demo this eye-tracking feature? By looking down the shirt and up the skirt of their mascot, Pearl. Yeah. This is presented as part of a suite of interactions between the user and the D1 pod…including touch controls. Jab Pearl in the chest and she shields herself, reacting "just like a real person", or so Dipal argues.
You know I could easily disappear into multiple paragraphs about the attitude to women expressed by this feature, but let's instead return to the talking point of a giant, holographic Ana De Armas—arguably the whole point of that scene in Blade Runner 2049 is that while replicant K's desire for connection is real, his relationship with AI girlfriend Joi was ultimately another manipulation by the Wallace corporation. For the avoidance of spoilers, I'll leave you with this: what are cute, seemingly harmless AI assistants like this ultimately selling? A fantasy of companionship, or a corporate stake in your heart?
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