Americans are being sold a new kind of convenience: 1X Technologies has opened preorders for NEO, a humanoid home robot that the company markets as a way to offload everyday chores. The early-access price is $20,000 with a subscription option of $499 per month, and deliveries are slated for 2026, so this is not vaporware but a real product pitched to homeowners.
On paper NEO looks impressive for a domestic helper — about 5 feet 6 inches tall, capable of fetching items, opening doors, folding laundry, and equipped with cameras, microphones, and an AI stack that promises to learn over time. The glossy demos highlight its soft exterior, articulated hands, and sensors designed for home navigation, and the company touts features like app scheduling and autonomous recharging.
But there is a glaring catch that should alarm every parent and homeowner: many of NEO’s more advanced tasks are performed not by an independent machine but by human teleoperators remotely guiding the robot into your living room. That means people outside your household could be granted live visual access to private spaces to teach the robot how to do chores, a reality that undercuts the whole sales pitch of “convenience” with an eerie privacy tradeoff.
Tech writers who have poked at the offering warn that despite the hype, the product isn’t truly autonomous yet and relies heavily on remote human control — a fact that exposes families to surveillance risks and creates a perpetual data pipeline into Big Tech. Instead of honest warnings, we’re getting subscription-led marketing that normalizes outsiders peeking into our homes under the guise of “training” and “support,” while the company collects more data to improve its models.
There’s also an economic angle that Washington elites won’t mention: these robots will displace real jobs and concentrate convenience in the hands of those who can afford $20,000 or a $499 monthly plan, while the rest of us pick up the bill in lost work and weakened communities. This is the same playbook — privatize gains, socialize risks — and it deserves scrutiny from anyone who cares about American workers, family privacy, and common-sense stewardship of our homes.
Hardworking Americans don’t need hype; they need safeguards. Before inviting a humanoid into a household, consumers should demand clear limits on remote access, strict transparency about who can view footage, a legally enforceable opt-out for teleoperation, and ironclad data deletion policies. If Big Tech wants to sell us a robot that lives in our living room, it must first earn our trust — and if it won’t, families should say no and insist Congress and state regulators put common-sense rules in place to protect our privacy, our jobs, and our way of life.
