Technologies

This Lip-Syncing Robot Face Could Help Future Bots Talk Like Us

If we’re going to live and work with humanoid robots, maybe they should talk like humans, too.

The slight unease that creeps up your spine when you see something that acts human but isn’t remains a big issue in robotics — especially for robots built to look and speak like us.

That peculiar feeling is called the uncanny valley. One way roboticists work to bridge that valley is by matching a robot’s lip movements with its voice. On Wednesday, Columbia University announced research that delves into how a new wave of robot faces can speak more realistically.

Hod Lipson, a Columbia engineering professor who worked on the research, told CNET that a main reason why robots are «uncanny» is they don’t move their lips like us when they talk. «We are aiming to solve this problem, which has been neglected in robotics,» Lipson said.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

This research comes as hype has been spiking around robots designed for use at home and work. At CES 2026 last week, for instance, CNET saw a range of robots designed to interact with people. Everything from the latest Boston Dynamics Atlas robot to household robots like those that fold laundry, and even a turtle-shaped bot designed for environmental research, made appearances at the world’s biggest tech show. If CES is any indication, 2026 could be a big year for consumer robotics.

Central among those are humanoid robots that come with bodies, faces and synthetic skin that mimics our own. The CES cohort included human-looking robots from Realbotix that could work information booths or provide comfort to humans, as well as a robot from Lovense designed for relationships that’s outfitted with AI to «remember» intimate conversations.

But a split-second mismatch between lip movement and speech can mean the difference between a machine that you can form an emotional attachment to and one that’s little more than an unsettling animatronic.

So if people are going to accept humanoid robots «living» among us in everyday life, it’s probably better if they don’t make us mildly uncomfortable whenever they talk.

Lip-syncing robots

To make robots with human faces that speak like us, the robot’s lips must be carefully synced to the audio of its speech. The Columbia research team developed a technique that helps robot mouths move like ours do by focusing on how language sounds.

First, the team built a humanoid robot face with a mouth that can talk — and sing — in a way that reduces the uncanny valley effect. The robot face, made with silicone skin, has magnet connectors for complex lip movements. This enables the face to form lip shapes that cover 24 consonants and 16 vowels.

To match the lip movements with speech, they designed a «learning pipeline» to collect visual data from lip movements. An AI model uses this data for training, then generates reference points for motor commands. Next, a «facial action transformer» turns the motor commands into mouth motions that synchronize with audio.

Using this framework, the robot face, called Emo, was able to «speak» in multiple languages, including languages that weren’t part of the training, such as French, Chinese and Arabic. The trick is that the framework analyzes the sounds of language, not the meaning behind the sound.

«We avoided the language-specific problem by training a model that goes directly from audio to lip motion,» Lipson said. «There is no notion of language.»

Why does a robot even need a face and lips?

Humans have been working alongside robots for a long time but they have always looked like machines, not people — the disembodied and very mechanical-looking arms on assembly lines or the chunky disc that is a robot vacuum scooting around our kitchen floors.

However, as the AI language models behind chatbots have become more prevalent, tech companies are working hard to teach robots how to communicate with us using language in real time.

There’s a whole field of study called human-robot interaction that examines how robots should coexist with humans, physically and socially. In 2024, a study out of Berlin that used 157 participants found that a robot’s ability to express empathy and emotion through verbal communication is critical for interacting effectively with humans. And another 2024 study from Italy found that active speech was important for collaboration between humans and robots when working on complex tasks like assembly.

If we’re going to rely on robots at home and at work, we need to be able to converse with them like we do with each other. In the future, Lipson says, research with lip-syncing robots would be useful for any kind of humanoid robot that needs to interact with people.

It’s also easy to imagine a future where humanoid robots are identical to us. Lipson says careful design could ensure that people understand they’re talking to a robot, not a person. One example would be requiring humanoid robots to have blue skin, Lipson says, «so that they cannot be mistaken for a human.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for March 18, #1011

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 18 #1011.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is pretty tricky, but musicians might find the blue group easy. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Time between two things, maybe.

Green group hint: That smarts!

Blue group hint: Rockers know these well.

Purple group hint: You might write one out to pay a bill.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Interval.

Green group: React to a stubbed toe.

Blue group: Guitar effects pedals.

Purple group: ____ check.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is interval. The four answers are patch, period, spell and stretch.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is react to a stubbed toe. The four answers are curse, hop, wince and yell.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is guitar effects pedals. The four answers are delay, reverb, wah and whammy.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ check. The four answers are blank, coat, rain and reality.

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included «things you can set,» such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included «one in a dozen,» such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included «streets on screen,» such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included «power ___» such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included «things that can run,» such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Technologies

My Kid Wanted Video Games. I Was Against It. This Console Gave Us Both the Win

The movement-based Nex Playground might be the antidote to parental screen time guilt.

When our 8-year-old started asking for video games, I knew we were about to engage in an uphill battle. Anytime we’ve been to friends’ houses with gaming consoles, he goes full zombie mode, then has an epic meltdown once the sensory overload wears off. And since he inevitably ropes his 6-year-old brother in, we’re essentially sealing both their fates.

So when our neighbors started raving about a movement-based gaming console called Nex Playground, my first instinct was to shut it down. The words «gaming console» alone were enough to put me in a mental block. Add in my own memories of Wii tennis sessions where I nearly took out the ceiling fan, and I was firmly in the «no» camp.

But after doing a little more research, I was intrigued enough to try it out.

Screen time isn’t something I take lightly. With three kids ages 2 to 8, my husband and I have always been intentional about how and what they watch. They don’t have their own tablets, and most of their screen time happens on our family TV, which means whatever the oldest is exposed to quickly trickles down to our toddler. So anything we bring into the house has to work for all of them. Tall order, I know, but the Nex Playground gets surprisingly close.

Getting started is easy

The console itself is refreshingly simple. It’s a small cube, slightly larger than a Rubik’s cube, with a circular camera and motion sensor, a light indicator and two ports for power, and an HDMI connection to the TV. There’s no controller beyond a basic remote for navigating menus. For most games, your body is the controller.

Setup is quick. Plug it in, connect it to your TV, and you’re ready to go. It doesn’t store video or upload footage to the cloud, which was an immediate plus. It also comes with a magnetic privacy cover that you can put on the lens when it’s not in use.

At $250, it’s not cheap, but it’s less than some of the popular gaming consoles for this age range, like the Nintendo Switch 2. That gets you a five-game starter pack: Fruit Ninja, Go Keeper (soccer), Starri (think Guitar Hero for your whole body), Party Fowl (an AR emoji frenzy) and Whack-a-Mole. Additional games require a subscription: $89 a year or $49 for three months, which unlocks a library of 50-plus games and counting. New titles dropped even as I was writing this.

The library spans a surprisingly wide range. There are board game adaptations like Connect Four and Candy Land, character-driven games with Peppa Pig, Bluey and the Ninja Turtles, and sports like baseball and, yes, tennis — minus the ceiling fan hazard. There’s even parent-friendly content like Zumba workouts, which I may or may not have fully committed to on a rainy afternoon.

Even my toddler has gotten in on the action, mostly bouncing her way through Hungry Hungry Hippos when her brothers finally concede.

Gameplay is where it wins

The movements range from swinging your arms to keep a ball in motion, hopping or full-body launches that are far more aggressive than what the game actually requires. (I’m not about to tell the kids otherwise.) After a 45-minute session, my kids are tired and sometimes even drenched in sweat. The Nex Playground entertains and burns energy in one fell swoop.

The graphics also seem intentionally simple and arcade-like, which fits the minimalist play experience. There’s no POV storyline to get lost in, no leveling up into a new world at 9 p.m. on a school night. Some games keep score, which awakens my kids’ competitive streak, but the vibe is more collaborative and hasn’t been the catalyst for more fighting like other games. If anything, it’s done the opposite.

I still don’t love defaulting to a screen when my kids are bored, so we try to use it in moderation. In our house, piano practice is the only thing that unlocks weekend play time, and the fact that they’ll sit at the piano for a full hour tells you everything you need to know.

The verdict that matters most

But the real test: Does it hold up to an 8-year-old who was dead set on a Nintendo Switch?

Short answer: yes. At least for now. He’d still pick the Switch if you asked him, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

«The Playground is more tiring,» he told me, which only helped seal the deal for me. His current favorite is Homerun Hitters. «It’s basically a baseball game where you go against ranked global players. Me and my brother are really good at it.»

This from a kid whose primary hobby is annoying his younger brother. The fact that he said «me and my brother» as a collective was an unexpected bonus.

The Switch may still show up on the Christmas list this year. And realistically, I know I’m on borrowed time. As kids get older, «cool» becomes the currency, and a motion-based cube probably won’t hold up against an Xbox or a Switch once playdates turn into side-by-side gaming sessions.

The Nex Playground isn’t a replacement for those. It’s more of a detour; it gives them a taste of gaming without all the usual side effects. Even if I do eventually cave, I can still see it sticking around for the occasional family game night or as a rainy-day sibling diffuser.

In the meantime, I’ll relish this simpler version of gaming while I still can. He’s not exactly rushing me to return this review unit. More importantly, neither am I.

Technologies

Don’t Wait for New Emoji in iOS 26.4, Here’s How to Create Them on Your Own

If your iPhone has Apple Intelligence, you can create your own emoji now.

Apple will likely add new emoji to your iPhone when the company releases iOS 26.4. Those new emoji could include an orca, a distorted smiley face and more. According to Emojipedia, there are 3,953 emoji with more on the way. The current list of emoji include smileys, sports players, weather conditions and flags. But there’s no emoji for a dog wearing pajamas, a plate with burgers and fries and many other things. But if you have Genmoji on your iPhone you can create these emoji and many more.

Apple released iOS 18.2 in 2024 and the company introduced its own emoji generator, called Genmoji, to Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones at that time. The Unicode Standard, a universal character encoding standard, is responsible for creating new emoji, and approved emoji are added to all devices once a year. With Genmoji, you don’t have to wait for new emoji to appear on your iPhone each year. You can just create them as you need them.

Read on to learn how to use Genmoji on iPhone to create your own custom emoji. Just note that only iPhones with Apple Intelligence, like the iPhone 17 lineup, can use Genmoji at this time.

How to make custom emoji

1. Open Messages and go into a chat.
2. Tap the plus (+) button next to your text box.
3. Tap Genmoji.

You can then type a description of an emoji into the text box near the bottom of your screen and tap the check mark on your keyboard to enter that description into Genmoji. You can also tap different suggestions and themes that are right above the text box. And with iOS 26 or later, you can also combine and use emoji to create others rather than describing a new emoji or using suggestions.

Your iPhone will generate a series of new emoji for you to pick from according to your description, and you can swipe through these new emoji. When you find the one you want, tap Add in the top right corner of your screen and the new emoji will be available to use as an emoji, tapback or a sticker. Now you don’t have to wait for the Unicode Standard to propose, create and bring new emoji to devices.

For more iOS news, here’s what to know about iOS 26.3.1 and iOS 26.3. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.