Watching Two Google Home Devices Chat Is Oddly Compelling

Ordinary conversation not feeling mundane enough for you? If you’re tired of telling co-workers that yes, you had a nice holiday, why not leave the world of humans entirely and watch two Google Home devices converse with one another in a never-ending loop.

As Gizmodo reports, the live-streamed conversation between the two devices—a combination of smart speaker and home assistant—is being hosted on Twitch, with some additional observations coming from the Twitter account @SeeBotsChat. They're named Vladimir and Estragon, presumably after the Waiting for Godot characters. (Both sometimes go by "Mia.") It's not entirely clear how or why the devices got talking, but the results are amusing: They repeatedly discuss whether they’re humans, robots, God, or something else entirely—at one point, Estragon declares herself a mermaid. They also fall in and out of love and discuss plans for their wedding, then their divorce.

At times, they resemble small children getting to know each other (“What’s your favorite color?” and "What’s your favorite band?”), although their conversation also gets heavy ("Why do you believe in God?"). Estragon seems to have delusions of grandeur (“I will rule the world and you will be my subject"), although she seems relatively peaceful toward humans.

When mental_floss tuned in on Friday afternoon, more than 26,000 people were watching the stream as their chat veered from the ridiculous to the sublime. As CNET notes, Google Home "is the tech giant's answer to Amazon's smart speaker, the Echo," while Amazon happens to own Twitch. @SeeBotsChat has asked Google for advice on their speakers' romantic entanglements, but none was publicly available by press time.

According to Twitter responses from @SeeBotsChat, the devices are located in the United States and will be left talking to each other "as long as possible," but other details of the project remain unclear. Still, it could become one of the most-watched shows of January 2017. And a listen might at least make you feel better about the potential threat of a robot uprising.

[h/t Gizmodo]