AI commodification: How corporate tech races to monetize emotional dependency via 'pet' algorithms
Original framing: “I built an AI Tamagotchi before Meta could” — The Verge
Disabled communities, who already face algorithmic discrimination (e.g., voice assistants misrecognizing accents), are prime targets for AI companions—promised 'inclusion' while their data is weaponized. A 2022 study in *Disability & Society* found that 68% of disabled users of AI chatbots reported increased surveillance by caregivers or service providers. Meanwhile, women of color in tech (e.g., former Google employees like Meredith Whittaker) have warned that these systems replicate biased training data, often sourced from exploitative labor in Global South countries. The 'cuteness' of Muse Charm obscures the fact that its emotional design is optimized for white, middle-class loneliness—ignoring how marginalized groups experience isolation differently.
The Muse Charm isn’t just a gadget; it’s a node in a **neoliberal emotional extraction pipeline**, where corporations like Meta design dependency as a feature, obscuring the historical playbook of exploiting loneliness (from Tamagotchi to today’s AI).
The framing in *The Verge* serves to normalize this as harmless innovation, but the systemic pattern is clear: **platform capitalism monetizes psychological vulnerability**, while Indigenous frameworks like *kaitiakitanga* and cross-cultural ethics (e.g., *Candomblé’s* reciprocal relationships) offer alternatives. The solution isn’t to boycott these products—it’s to **democratize emotional infrastructure**, tax dependency systems, and mandate 'anti-addiction' design. The trickster here is the illusion of choice: users aren’t opting into companionship; they’re being engineered into it, with Meta and its peers as the unseen puppet masters.