Yesterday’s Bloomberg report on Apple’s upcoming tabletop robot didn’t reveal anything new about the hardware, but plans to give it a personality could represent a huge gamble. The starting point seems both uncontroversial and a great idea – basing the UI on the friendly Finder icon that we’ve known and loved since the welcome screen of the original Macintosh back in 1984 … A Finder-based animated face While Mark Gurman said Memoji-styles alternatives are being considered, animating the Finder icon really does sound perfect to me. Apple is planning to put Siri at the center of the device operating system and give it a visual personality to make it feel lifelike […] Apple has tested making Siri look like an animated version of the Finder logo, the iconic smiley face representing the Mac’s file management system. It would be a great compromise between the abstract and now dated Siri animation on the one hand, and a photorealistic human face on the other. The former seems too boring for a robot-style device, while the latter seems a little cringey. A virtual companion But another aspect of Apple’s reported plans seems to me significantly riskier. The report described it as attempting to be a “virtual companion,” and suggests that it may be a far from passive one. A tabletop robot that serves as a virtual companion, targeted for 2027, is the centerpiece of the AI strategy, according to people with knowledge of the matter […] Like a human head, it can turn toward a person […] and even seek to draw the attention of someone not facing it […] The hallmark of the device is an entirely new version of the Siri voice assistant that can inject itself into conversations between multiple people. It will be able to engage with users throughout the day and more easily recall information. The idea is for the device to act like a person in a room. It could interrupt a conversation between friends about dinner plans, say, and suggest nearby restaurants or relevant recipes. That sounds, uh, how do I put this? Oh yes: terrible. Yes, it should turn to face people who are addressing it. Yes, it should use facial recognition to know who is talking to it, and use that information to respond with appropriate contextual information, like upcoming calendar entries. But constantly listening to private conversations and interrupting people to offer unsolicited suggestions? Um, no thanks! Given Apple’s approach to privacy, I’m sure the reality will be that it is something you toggle on and off as you like. But I still see it as something I would try once just for the novelty and then switch off forever. Perhaps Apple feels it has to do something radical It’s no secret that Apple has fallen way behind the curve when it comes to AI, and it is going to take the company some considerable time to catch up. A key approach Apple has taken many times is to sit and watch what competitors do and then aim to produce something better than anything else on the market. Best not first, as the company would say. It sounds like this is what the company may be hoping to do with this product, and because it is so far behind, it perhaps feels it needs to do something radical here. But this honestly strikes me as a massive gamble at best, and an awful idea at worst. Gurman referenced Microsoft’s Clippy as a prior example of an animated face and personality – and we all know how well that worked out! What’s your view? Do you think Apple should take this gamble? And do you think it will be welcomed or derided? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Highlighted accessories