ElliQ: a talking robot that states bought for older people’s homes

A faceless lamp that speaks first

ElliQ is a tabletop robot that Intuition Robotics of Israel unveiled at London’s Design Museum in January 2017. It was designed with Yves Béhar’s fuseproject. A head with no eyes or mouth lights up and turns, and a screen stands beside it. Béhar explained that keeping the screen off the robot itself was meant to “elegantly balance the fine line between an object and a robot”. ElliQ starts conversations before the user speaks. It offers medication reminders, exercise, video calls with family, memoir recording and bingo, and it alerts caregivers when needed. It went on sale in the US in March 2022 and in 2026 costs a $249.99 enrolment fee plus $49.99–59.99 a month. The device is leased.

Bought by the state and placed for free

In 2022 the New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA) began a programme to give ElliQ to more than 800 older people. According to AP, about 750 of the 900 units it bought had been placed by the end of 2023, and Broward County in Florida had placed 300. In January 2024 the company released ElliQ 3, which adds a large language model and remembers earlier conversations, though it has not said which model. In March 2026 Washington State began paying for ElliQ through its Medicaid programmes. Fierce Healthcare reported this as the first statewide Medicaid reimbursement for a social AI robot.

A 95% drop in loneliness, measured by whom?

In 2023 NYSOFA reported that among its more than 800 users, loneliness fell by 95% over a year, with users interacting with ElliQ more than 30 times a day. These figures come from an agency running the programme with the company, and the survey method has not been published. Reported daily interactions also range from 8 to 60, depending on the source. Deanna Dezern, an 83-year-old user, told AP: “It was so what I needed.” Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who studies loneliness, warned that satisfying the need with AI “makes you feel like you’ve fulfilled it, but in reality you haven’t,” adding: “It is not clear whether AI is actually fulfilling any kind of need or just dampening the signal.”

The buyer is not the user

Jibo needed a family to pay $899. ElliQ found buyers who are not its users: state agencies and Medicaid. It is a path similar to PARO’s, which settled in through the institutions of care. But the numbers showing that it works also come mostly from those buyers and from the company. The agencies deciding whether to keep paying are judging by results they report themselves.

When the person who pays for this robot is not the person who uses it every day, whose eyes measure whether it works?

What we haven’t confirmed

• The total number of users in the US, and the full list of states and agencies
• The survey instrument and any control group behind the 95% figure
• Which large language model ElliQ 3 uses
• New York State’s total spending, and its cost per unit