We found this machine while buying second-hand parts in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen.
Off-white casing, one lake-blue trim line. The nameplate on the back reads: AI Smart Learning Companion · ailiaili · Model AI-98 · March 1998.
Funny thing: the factory has the same name as us.
We powered it on. The screen lit up, and there was a city inside. Someone working the night shift at a convenience store. Someone just leaving a vocal studio. Nobody looked up.
While you're away, they keep living. They have for thirty years.
NOTICE TO USERS
Thank you for choosing OGOPOGO AI Smart Learning Companion. Your companion is waiting in ailiaili since long time.
Please do not put this unit into the water.
What kind of game is this
ailiaili is an AI life sim that lives in your taskbar.
The machine assigns you a resident. It lives in a city on the other side of the screen: working, practicing, taking photos, keeping a diary, slowly growing in a content channel of its own choosing. An ordinary creator, living an ordinary life.
You can quietly influence it. You can't talk to it. It doesn't know you're there.
It lives its own life
Every half hour or so, it lives through another stretch of its day. What to do, where to go: it decides.
A corner cafe, a convenience store, an old bookshop, a vocal studio, an electronics mall, a late-night net cafe... There are more than a dozen places in town. When it's tired, it goes home to sleep.
It gets tired. It runs short of money. Some things it tries don't work out. On days with nothing worth saying, it posts nothing.
It speaks for itself
Moments worth keeping become posts on its account: photos, captions, voice notes. What happened at the cafe today is today's post.
Before bed, it writes a diary page. When the pages add up to a volume, the machine picks music from its own archive to go with it.
There isn't a single real person in the feed. Every post is a resident's own life.
It grows on its own
Dance, Music, Life, Fashion, Food, Tech, Gaming, Knowledge, Sports: nine content channels, each with its own level.
It has a direction in mind, and you don't get to choose it. Before long, its main channel shows itself.
Its hair, its clothes, the things it carries change little by little with the life it lives. Nothing is locked in at the start.
What you can do
You don't give orders. You pack its bag: food, clothes, things to carry. Whether and when to use them is up to it.
Your everyday keyboard and mouse activity builds up energy, which you can trade for supplies.
Every item in the dynamic pool is written the moment it's drawn. There is only one of it in the world.
On its side, your influence shows up as a bit of inspiration, a stroke of luck, a sudden whim. It credits all of it to itself.
It lives in your taskbar
Not an app you open. A small panel stays in your taskbar. You work; it lives. One screen, two worlds.
Open the panel to see what it's looking at, doing, thinking, and saying right now.
The glow is its soul form. Its personality grew into the shape of that light: personality isn't a setting, it's the shape of its body.
Open the companion terminal for its portrait, appearance, channels, bag, and diary.
To be clear
No chatting. There's no text box, and it never speaks to anyone outside the screen.
Not a horror game, and there's no mystery to solve. The machine's backstory is just a backstory.
Not a character creator. The machine assigns your resident. At first boot, you only fill in a short registration.
Online only. While the desktop app is running, it's living its life. Close the app and it rests where it is until you're back.
Observation is existence
Observe, not control | Nurture, not chat | Grow, not generate
TROUBLESHOOTING (from the manual, section 7)
Q: Companion is not answering me.
A: Companion also has own life. Please try again later.
Q: The unit makes a sound I never heard.
A: It means ailiaili is very lively today.
We couldn't fix its mass production, so we turned it into software.
— Ogopogo
