{"id":425828,"date":"2026-01-22T12:36:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T12:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/425828\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T12:36:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T12:36:34","slug":"razer-seems-even-more-confused-about-its-ai-waifu-than-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/425828\/","title":{"rendered":"Razer Seems Even More Confused About Its ‘AI Waifu’ Than the Rest of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

PC and peripherals maker Razer believes that somebody, somewhere, is desperate to put an anime cat girl on their desk, like their personal imprisoned Tinkerbell who\u2019s forced to compliment them on command. The company\u2019s Project Ava<\/a> includes either a female waifu or male husbando hologram housed inside a glass jar that uses conversational AI to talk to users. The thing is, Razer doesn\u2019t know when it will be out, or\u2014apparently\u2014much else about this device it promises will be an actual product.<\/p>\n

We went hands-on with Project Ava during CES 2026<\/a>. It\u2019s stuffed with technology we\u2019ve seen before\u2014namely, an animated avatar and AI chatbot that\u2019s meant to act as a player\u2019s gaming mentor and desktop companion. Razer is mostly known for its PC gaming laptops<\/a>, mice, and headsets<\/a>, but it often goes to CES with a\u00a0fair few concept devices<\/a> in tow; hence Ava\u2019s \u201cProject\u201d nomenclature. In this case, Razer swore to consumers that Project Ava and its other AI gadget\u2014a pair of headphones with cameras and AI visual capabilities called Project Motoko<\/a>\u2014would become real products\u2026 eventually.<\/p>\n

During an interview on The Verge\u2019s Decoder podcast<\/a>, Razer\u2019s co-founder and CEO, Min-Liang Tan, couldn\u2019t offer many specifics about what\u2019s going on with its waifu in a jar, nor much about how people can buy it. Project Ava is currently open<\/a> for \u201creservations\u201d that cost $20. Those reservations will eventually become preorders with a promised, though vague, release date in the second half of 2026. At the same time, Tan said they were still getting feedback and \u201chear[ing] what the concerns are.\u201d And there certainly are concerns, considering we\u2019ve yet to see an AI-centric gadget<\/a> accomplish anything our existing products couldn\u2019t already do.<\/p>\n

Can you actually buy Project Ava? \"ProjectYou can also load Project Ava with a \u2018husbando\u2019 character instead of a catgirl waifu. \u00a9 Kyle Barr \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Razer hasn\u2019t settled on what\u2019s actually going on inside its AI companion device. Tan said, \u201cWe have not disclosed the actual specs of the product, and not even, for example, which character models, or even which model it\u2019s gonna be running at this point in time. We\u2019re leaving that absolutely open.\u201d Razer previously told Gizmodo it was working with esports stars to potentially stick their mugs and voices in the jar. Hopefully, it\u2019s comfortable with the new parasocial relationships consumers will naturally create with their likeness.<\/p>\n

Tan also told The Verge\u2019s Nilay Patel, \u201cSo\u00a0what we have actually said is that these are reservations. They\u2019re not pre-orders, per se. So, ultimately, when we do launch the product, and it could be a long way out, by then, because of the specs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an email statement to Gizmodo, Razer said, \u201cThe $20 reservation for Project Ava is a refundable deposit towards the final purchase price of the product. We will have more information on pre-orders for Project Ava in the future and look forward to sharing more information soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essentially, the reservation is a preorder for a preorder. It sets you up in line to get a Project Ava (knowing that\u2019s definitely not the final name) with the hope that you\u2019ll actually want it once the company reveals what\u2019s actually going on inside. On its product page, Razer promises you can cancel the reservation and ask for a refund. The company further implied that Project Ava may be in hot demand, and only those who get in line first can hope to get their waifu shipped to their door at some vague future date.<\/p>\n

Razer\u2019s CEO doesn\u2019t see the problem with Elon Musk\u2019s Grok <\/p>\n

Project Ava, as an AI chatbot companion, was already a concept Razer had shown off before. The attached waifu hologram is merely a facade for what we\u2019ve experienced before from the likes of Microsoft<\/a>. The \u201cGaming Copilot\u201d is still in beta, and it\u2019s currently terrible at what it\u2019s supposed to do. In some cases, Copilot doesn\u2019t even know a game\u2019s controls, even though they were published by Microsoft\u2019s Xbox brand. In my short time with Project Ava, the waifu AI wouldn\u2019t offer me any solid advice on how to manage recoil in a game like Battlefield 6. Mind you, the demo Razer set us up with was the game\u2019s target practice mode that is all about aiming.<\/p>\n

Razer was reluctant to tell us exactly what was happening inside the glass jar, beyond the fact that it was using Elon Musk\u2019s brainchild, Grok, as its centerpiece AI model. We also thought that was a strange choice. When pressed, Razer told Gizmodo that Grok had the best conversational model that helped it sound more human-like. Never mind that Grok is at the center of numerous controversies on X (formerly Twitter), where the chatbot was willing to talk openly about \u201cMechaHitler\u201d<\/a> and share nonconsensual sexual images<\/a>. The reason why Grok seems more conversational is because it\u2019s designed with \u201ctone\u201d in mind and fewer guardrails\u2014or, more specifically, made to parrot Musk\u2019s increasingly nativist worldview.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMy focus to date has been more in terms of what\u2019s the best conversational model that we\u2019ve got, and they\u2019re great, they\u2019re fantastic,\u201d Tan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PC and peripherals maker Razer believes that somebody, somewhere, is desperate to put an anime cat girl on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,874,4804,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-425828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-gaming","14":"tag-razer","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}