We now have humanoid home robots
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI)—the ever-reliable personal assistant, its endless capabilities—sounds beautiful and seems taken straight out of science fiction. But in reality, getting to that promise hasn’t exactly been the smoothest of rides, from its role in spreading misinformation via social media to its misuse in plagiarizing all sorts of copyright material.
The same applies to robotics: An enticing pipe dream driven by fiction and the fantasy of a robot assistant watching over your home as you make time for things that truly matter.
1X, an AI and robotics company based in Palo Alto, California, is bringing us closer to that future with NEO, the first consumer-ready humanoid robot to hit the market. NEO is designed to take care of every chore you don’t want to do, from washing the dishes to folding your laundry—an unlikely mix between ChatGPT and a helper you can hire for much cheaper.
But without rose-tinted glasses, it’s plain to see that NEO isn’t the future manifest—instead, a work in progress reliant on your personal data, with a $20,000 price tag to boot.
The promise
“Humanoids were long a thing of sci-fi… but today, with the launch of NEO, humanoid robots have become a product. Something that you and I can reach out and touch. NEO closes the gap between our imaginations and the world we live in, to the point where we can actually ask a humanoid robot for help, and help is granted,” says Bernt Børnich, CEO and founder of 1X.
NEO, as advertised so far, is everything you can ask for from a home robot. You can schedule chores for NEO to do throughout the day, from clearing out the living room to putting things back in the kitchen—ensuring that you can come back to a home in better shape than when you left it.
Through a mobile application or a simple voice command, the 1X robot can also be told to do certain chores in real time.
The robot is outfitted with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 5G as well as speakers in the pelvis and chest area. NEO is weighed at 66 pounds (29.94 kg), and can lift over 150 pounds (68 kg) and carry 55 pounds (24.95kg).
Unpaid beta testers aka robot babysitters
But despite the promise of the future in sight, robotic autonomy isn’t as readily available yet as we’ve been made to believe. According to 1X, “For any chore that NEO doesn’t yet know, owners can schedule a 1X Expert to guide it through unknown tasks—helping NEO learn while getting the job done.”
And from what we’ve seen, there’s plenty it doesn’t know yet.
Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal posted a YouTube video in which she spent the day with NEO and the 1X team. Throughout the entire demonstration, NEO didn’t perform a single autonomous action and instead had to rely on input from a remote operator in a separate room.
Then comes the matter of privacy. Forget web browsers and social media sites monitoring your online activity—1X is set to literally view your personal data at its most personal: Your home. But Børnich maintains that faces will be blurred during “expert mode,” and you can section off certain parts of your home that the operator cannot enter. But the fact remains that you will technically be allowing a stranger inside your home, remotely at least.
The robot can undoubtedly physically lift, grasp, and hold objects. But knowing where to go, and how to judge distance and depth—especially in an environment as unpredictable as a home, requires more work and data, specifically, your data.
According to tech reviewer and YouTuber Marques Brownlee, this follows a practice set by Tesla and how they’ve developed their self-driving feature. There’s a limit to how much programming you can do, and the best way you can teach AI is to have it experience the real world in all of its unpredictability.
Børnich and the rest of 1X do maintain that NEO would be able to handle basic tasks autonomously by release. But as Stern noted, having the robot at launch will be akin to raising a toddler.
NEO is expected to start shipping in 2026 in the US, with the robotics company looking to expand to international markets by 2027. NEO is priced at $20,000, but 1X also offers a $499/month subscription deal.
