One thing.. Calling any device "the first musical robot" ignores some interesting and important parts of well documented computational history that predate this product by hundreds of years:
Self playing organs(1800's), pianos(1800's), musical clocks(1500/1600's).. Things like this have existed for ages as fully automated and programmable musical "robots". They shaped 19th century ideas about computation. Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage explicitly referenced musical automata in their work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaucanson_Flute_Player here's a cool example
Basically a speaker on wheel with a screen.
Is this an AI design?
Even if it’s not though, I doubt it’s going to get off the ground.
“CUBIE slips into characters from your favourite films, speaks with matching tone and dialogue”
It will either be sued out of existence for infringing the likeness of dozens of Hollywood stars, or the ongoing costs of using licensed voices from somewhere like ElevenLabs will make it unsustainable.
lifeformed•2mo ago