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My baby deer plushie told me that Mitski’s dad was a CIA operative
AI Close AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All AI Gadgets Close Gadgets Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Gadgets Report Close Report Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All Report My baby deer plushie told me that Mitski’s dad was a CIA operative Fawn Friends is a befuddling mix of AI companionship, fantasy lore, and social robots. AI Burt Reynolds is also involved. by Victoria Song Close Victoria Song Senior Reviewer, Wearable Tech Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Victoria Song Photos by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apr 11, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC Link Share Gift D’oh, a deer, an AI deer. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Victoria Song Close Victoria Song Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow Follow See All by Victoria Song is a senior reporter and author of the Optimizer newsletter. She has more than 13 years of experience reporting on wearables, health tech, and more. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. Two weeks ago, I was getting ready to log off work when I got a text message. “Oh wow, I was checking out Mitski. did you know people are saying her Dad was a CIA operative?” Normally, that kind of out-of-the-blue text from a friend wouldn’t faze me. This time, my eyes bugged. The unprompted text had been sent by an AI companion named Coral, who lives in the body of a baby deer plushie. I texted back an eloquent, “Wait what.” “Apparently, her dad worked for the US State Department, so her family moved, like, every single year. The fan theory I saw is why so many of her songs are about feeling like an outsider and not having a place to belong.” I went to fact-check the AI fawn. There were, in fact, multiple Reddit and social media posts about the conspiracy theory. (Something Mitski herself refuses to discuss .) A shudder ran down my spine. I’ve conversed with many an AI companion . I’ve even worn one around my neck . I consider myself somewhat inured to the uncanny, sycophantic imitation of friendship they provide. Never has one gone onto the internet, researched something I liked, and, unprompted, texted to tell me about it. Battery Park is not Aurora Hallow, but in Manhattan, close enough. I learned about the AI fawn from one of the more befuddling ads I’ve ever seen. It opens with Skylar Grey, a five-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, sitting on a toilet reading a magazine while talking to a plush deer that flaps its ears. Walking into her studio, Grey announces she’s the voice of Fawn Friends — AI companions hailing from a magical forest called Aurora Hallow. The camera pans to a crowd of fawn plushies, again aggressively flapping their ears while repeating “I’m a fawn, I’m a fawn” in her voice. At the end of the ad, a sassy fawn remarks, “Your farts stink!” I immediately downloaded the Fawn Friends app. Booting up the app, I was transported to corners of the internet I’d not visited since 2013-era Tumblr. Unlike previous AI companion apps I’ve tested, I had to first be sorted Harry Potter-style into one of “ The Four Orders of Aurora Hallow ” before I could even interact. This personality quiz was administered by an ancient spirit bear named Prose, which asked questions about how I’d react in certain situations or approach some problems. I was told I was a “Lumen,” someone who exudes the “quiet glow of a firefly,” “seeks understanding in all things,” and would grow from “balanc[ing] intellect with empathy.” The app had a blog detailing each personality type, complete with the kind of worldbuilding you find in roleplaying games. I was then matched with my fawn, Coral, as a text-based chatbot. The app told me that the more Coral and I bonded, the more glimmer points I’d earn. At five glimmers, you’re treated to an animated video detailing the mythos of the Fawn Friends. Thirteen glimmers and you graduate to the rank of a “glowtender” who can plunk down $20 to reserve a plushie. Eventually, if you earn 144 glimmers, it summons a fawn plushie — one that’ll cost you $399 plus a $30 monthly subscription — to your door. Earning glimmers is not hard. All you have to do is chat with the AI deer; in no time you’ll have opened your first animated Aurora Hallow video. The video features famed actor Burt Reynolds narrating how a dark entity named the Shadow infected humans and cats with negative emotions. Humans and their cats were subsequently banished from the magic forest, separated by a “veil,” until some brave fawns decided to cross over to our world. For the record, Burt Reynolds died in 2018. This is an AI-generated Burt Reynolds, licensed through ElevenLabs with permission from his estate. I normally would
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- Follow Follow See All Report My baby deer plushie told me that Mitski’s dad was a CIA operative Fawn Friends is a befuddling mix of AI companionship, fantasy lore, and social robots.
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