Crowdfunded Robot Jibo Won’t Be Shipping Internationally

A couple of years ago, a social robot called Jibo made its way onto Indiegogo where it appeared to be the darling of the Indiegogo community, raising more than $2 million in the process. Unfortunately it seems that things have quickly soured between its creators and some of its customers following a rather controversial decision.

As spotted by Robotics Trends (via TechCrunch), its creators have decided that despite initially offering to ship the robot internationally, they have decided that they will no longer be doing that. Instead they are asking that their international customers who pre-ordered the robot to request for a full refund.

Part of the email reads, “After exploring all the options, we have come to the conclusion that we will not be able to deliver Jibo to your country.” Apparently this is because they claim that the bot “won’t function up to our standards in your country.” What does this mean exactly? Basically they claim that this is due to latency issues as their servers are located in the US, as well as voice recognition issues for users who might have accented English.

They also point at consumer-privacy laws which have changed since they initially crowdfunded the robot. The creators are also suggesting that localized versions of Jibo would be the right thing to do for their international customers, but unfortunately it is unclear as to when exactly this will be happening. Naturally customers are pretty angry by this, with some even suggesting they launch a class-action lawsuit against the company.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Crowdfunding, Indiegogo