Mobile World Congress (MWC) is one of those conferences where tech companies wheel out some of the most nonsensical pieces of technology you’ll ever see. And today’s Gizmodo Australia Most Cursed Piece Tech of Award goes to Deutsche Telekom, for its “AI concierge” Emma.
This AI-based avatar gives artificial intelligence a face and serves people as a personal assistant for all aspects of daily life.
“‘Emma, beam me up’ may not work yet, but the holographic calls with ‘Concept View’ pick up on the idea of digital travel. And Emma, the AI-based avatar, can do much more. She gives artificial intelligence a face and serves people as a personal assistant for all aspects of daily life,” the company wrote in a blog post.
It’s very sci-fi, looking a bit like a plasma globe, but unfortunately, it’s an AI-powered assistant. The momentary joy that you’d get from a plasma globe doesn’t exist, and instead, Emma would offer you 3D holograms of things, including video calls to other people (which look like crap, even in a concept video like the one above). It also does all the stuff you can currently ask a chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT, because obviously it also needs to be an AI.
Emma is not the sole toy Deutsche Telekom has wheeled out for MWC 2024. The company, which owns American telco T-Mobile, also brought along a modular smart home for room sensing, WiFi sensing (?), a voice assistant, an interactive display, wireless charging, and for some reason, “a Web 3 module” which stores your NFTs. That’s right, we’re still doing cryptoshit in 2024.
Another concept that the telco brought along was a “friendly butler”, a little robot that rolls around your home on wheels and can measure air quality in rooms, project things onto the walls with an in-built projector, and function as a portable speaker.
Neither of these are are creepy looking as Emma though. When I was scrolling through the various news feeds this morning and saw a post involving Deutsche Telekom’s Emma, I made an audible ‘UGH!’ in fear and disgust.
Oh, and Emma is also a great display for all of your NFTs!
“Of course, Emma also masters Web3 applications. She manages the digital wallet as well as the digital identities of household members. She also manages cryptocurrencies and NFTs,” the company said. I’m so glad I can keep all my sad monkey photos in an evil-looking orb.
Anyway. Emma is currently on display at MWC 2024, and visitors can come up and interact with it.
I would, however, like to smash it with a hammer.