GoKawiilThoughtful Things launches Kickstarter for Engram, an AI hallucination sampler
Music startup Thoughtful Things has opened a Kickstarter campaign for Engram, a sampler and groovebox that uses a locally-run, custom-trained AI model to distort audio and generate new, glitchy sounds. The company says the AI was trained only on commercially licensed data, and plans to open the firmware so users can modify or replace its models. Early Kickstarter pledges start at $675, a reported 30 percent discount off an eventual retail price expected near $850-$900.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
By running AI entirely offline and emphasizing licensed training data, Thoughtful Things appears to be positioning Engram against controversies over AI models trained on scraped or pirated content. The open-firmware approach could appeal to musicians and tinkerers interested in circuit-bending style experimentation rather than polished, commercial song generation tools like Suno.
- Engram is a hardware sampler using a local, custom AI model rather than cloud-based generation.
- Thoughtful Things claims its models are trained only on commercially licensed audio datasets.
- Kickstarter pledges start at $675, with retail pricing expected around $850-$900.
Source: theverge.com — Terrence O'Brien, 2026-09-27
Published there as: “Engram is a sampler that turns broken AI hallucinations into music”
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