Good Luck Getting a Hand on the World’s First AI Punching Bag

Conor McGregor really could've used one of these

April 3, 2018 9:00 am EDT

“I am the greatest!”

… BotBoxer’s new interactive boxing simulator might say, if it had the ability to do so.

What it can do, however, is make one hell of a boxer of you, with an algorithm that collects data on your sparring sessions and then fine-tunes the data to make future workouts more challenging.

How does it work?

A post shared by @botboxer on

Looking a bit like a tackling dummy perched on an arcade game undulator, BotBoxer is an elusive sparring robot that can purportedly “see” and react to your jabs and hooks. Based on the difficulty settings of the program (and your past success/tendencies), the “smart” machine will evade punches with the speed of a pro, forcing you to increase the velocity and unpredictability of your jabs and hooks.

This set-up comes with an interface monitor that allows you to test out various drills (adjusting reaction speed, distance away) and collect data on the force of your punches or hit rate. Eventually, you can even go toe-to-toe for multiple rounds with BotBoxer (at which point it will have a pretty good feel for what you’re capable of).

In an age of increasingly threatening robots, it’s comforting to know at least one of them wants us to get stronger.

Place a deposit now to reserve yours. BotBoxer tentatively ships in September 2018.

Meet your guide

Tanner Garrity

Tanner Garrity

Tanner Garrity is a senior editor at InsideHook, where he’s covered wellness, travel, sports and pop culture since 2017. He also authors The Charge, InsideHook’s weekly wellness newsletter. Beyond the newsroom, he can usually be found running, skating, reading, writing fiction or playing tennis. He lives in Brooklyn.
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