Thoughtful Things launches Engram, an AI hallucination sampler
The startup opened a Kickstarter campaign for Engram, a hardware sampler that uses AI to mangle audio and generate new sounds rather than complete songs, The Verge reported.
Thoughtful Things opened a Kickstarter campaign Sunday for Engram, its first hardware instrument, The Verge reported. The company describes it as a sampler and groovebox that uses a small onboard AI model to mangle recorded audio and generate new sounds from it, without any internet connection or app.
The company calls the technique "model bending": tuning, and deliberately disrupting, the tiny onboard model to push it toward glitches and hallucinated sounds rather than clean output. Thoughtful Things says the model runs entirely on the device's own hardware, and according to the company was designed and trained in-house, with no cloud service involved.
The Verge said Engram is not meant as a "push-button, get-song" device like AI music generators such as Suno. Thoughtful Things describes the tiny models as a deliberate alternative to large-scale AI systems, and says on its site that they train on standard gaming PCs rather than data centers.
Thoughtful Things' listing describes a limited run of discounted units for early Kickstarter backers. It does not state a price, funding goal or ship date on the page as of Sunday. Neither the company nor The Verge's report specified how many units had been pledged.