When Boston Dynamics started building their robot dogs all those years ago, the reaction of the internet was largely, “Hey, that’s cool!”


In the years since, however, the dogs have gotten better — and the mood around them has become significantly more sinister. Rather than see them as robot friends, their perception has shifted to be Black Mirror-like beasts, sentient killing machines that will one day rule us all. Not helping that idea is the fact that we keep loading them up with weapons — it’s like we *want* the A.I. to win!


Now, they’ve covered one of these robo-dogs in fur, for some reason. I’ll let you determine whether this is good or bad.



According to Metro, the dog is named Sparkles, and it was debuted by Boston Dynamics to celebrate International Dance Day (I don’t know what that is, either).


“Boston Dynamics explained: ‘Sparkles is a custom costume designed just for Spot to explore the intersections of robotics, art and entertainment,’” the Metro piece reads. “The dogs were trained using Choreographer, a dance-dedicated system made available by Boston Dynamics with entertainment and media industry customers in mind.”


Reading this, one would think that Boston Dynamics envisions an actual job for this dog beyond “sparking sheer terror in the minds of children around the world.” Will the dog actually get a job? Who knows, but given that fursuit, it’s much more likely that they’re going to get into some weird shit first.