Finally — a robot that can do your dishes, if you’ve got a spare 20K and don’t mind a little remote control from a random stranger.
Imagine coming home, kicking off your shoes, and letting a sleek, soft-bodied humanoid robot handle the absolute worst part of your day: the dishes.
That is the futuristic utopia being promised by 1X Technologies (a robotics company heavily backed by OpenAI) with their new home robot, NEO.
Standing at 5’6″ and wrapped in a machine-washable knit suit, NEO looks less like a cold, terrifying sci-fi terminator and more like a helpful, avant-garde roommate.
The company has officially opened pre-orders, offering the robot for a casual $20,000 outright or a $499-a-month subscription.
The marketing videos are nothing short of hypnotic. NEO smoothly opens doors, tidies living rooms, and delicately puts away fragile glassware. It feels like the Jetson-esque future we were promised has finally arrived.
But behind the slick editing, early hands-on demos have exposed a massive, borderline dystopian catch. NEO isn’t actually doing those chores on its own.
Right now, NEO’s autonomous brain is only capable of incredibly basic tasks. When it comes to the complex stuff –like figuring out how to stack a modern dishwasher without shattering your favourite coffee mug – NEO hits a wall.
When the robot gets stuck, it enters what 1X calls “Expert Mode.” “`
[NEO Encounters a Complex Chore]
[Activates “Expert Mode”]
[Corporate Employee Logs In via VR]
[Human Remotely Pilots the Robot in Your Home]
That’s right: a living, breathing corporate employee sitting in a 1X office miles away straps on a VR headset, grabs motion controllers, and takes over NEO’s body. When the robot moves its arms in your kitchen, it is because a stranger is moving “their” arms in an office.
While 1X is transparent about this system – explaining that the human operator is essentially “teaching” the AI how to do the chore for the future – it opens up a massive pandora’s box of privacy concerns.
To fold your laundry or clear your table, you have to open an app, schedule a session, and actively grant a corporate worker permission to look through your robot’s camera eyes.
NEO features flashing LED “Emotive Ear Rings” on its head to warn you when a remote human is actively piloting it, but the reality remains: you are paying a premium to let a stranger virtually hang out in your private living space.
Beyond the glaring privacy trade-off, early testers note that when NEO *is* attempting to move autonomously, it is excruciatingly slow – sometimes taking up to five minutes just to move three plates.
It is also prone to losing its balance, which isn’t exactly ideal if you have pets or toddlers running around.
There is no doubt that NEO is a staggering achievement in hardware. Its “Tendon Drive” system allows it to move with a gentle, human-like grace, and its 22-degree-of-freedom hands are a marvel of engineering.
But for $20,000, you aren’t buying a fully independent mechanical maid. You are buying a very expensive, very advanced avatar for a remote corporate worker to pilot around your house, all in the name of data collection.
For now, it might just be easier – and significantly cheaper and way less creepy – to keep doing the dishes.
