Hackaday · Creativity & design

Virtual Pet Encourages Less Phone Use by Mimicking Owner's Habits

A new virtual pet project uses a combination of a physical device and a local AI to encourage users to reduce their smartphone screen time.

The virtual pet, built on an ESP32 with a 3D-printed case, is designed to react to the user's phone activity. Its core mechanic involves the pet becoming 'sick' if the user engages in excessive 'doomscrolling,' leveraging human empathy to motivate reduced usage.

The project incorporates a local large language model (LLM) on the smartphone. This AI agent has access to screen time data and notifications, and uses a whisper model connected via Bluetooth to a microphone in the pet.

Users can receive summaries of notifications or ask the pet for jokes without directly looking at their phone. The pet also has a voice, generated by a local piper model, which can prompt the user to put their phone down when usage limits are reached.

The creator, brenpoly, has made the project's details available on GitHub for others to replicate. The goal is to offer an alternative to more extreme phone usage control methods.

The project exists on a spectrum of phone usage moderation tools, ranging from simple phone stands to smart device vaults.

AI-samenvatting op basis van de bron.