If you had “holographic anime girlfriends” on your CES 2026 bingo card, congratulations; you are both unhinged and correct. I personally did not see this trend coming, but after walking the show floor and getting briefed by Razer on its waifu-coded Project Ava, the proof is in the pudding—and the pudding this year is otaku-flavored.
As I mentioned, the splashiest of the waifu holograms comes courtesy of Razer, which ported its AI gaming assistant into a desktop hologram. I got a chance to see and interact with the newly anime-ified Project Ava myself, and it’s, uh… interesting. The holographic chamber comes with a camera, which allows you to interact with your waifu avatar, and, in turn, it can lay “eyes” upon you and bestow you with AI-generated style tips. To be clear, there are other avatars you can choose to populate the Project Ava chamber, but Kira, the waifu one, feels like the star of the show.
So, that’s it, right? Thus concludes the CES list of holographic AI girlfriends? Wrong. So wrong. There’s one from a company called Dipal, for example, that is a lot like Proejct Ava, but not at all geared toward gaming. I reluctantly stepped into a booth and chatted with “Pearl,” the AI companion trapped inside Dipal’s holographic chamber, and, yup, it’s a waifu hologram, alright.
We talked about anime, sports, her name… then anime again. Pearl was super into everything that I was into—what a perfect match. Loves, One-Punch Man. I think we’re going to get married! Hopefully that’s not paywalled by some kind of monthly subscription or something (tear drop anime face).
But that’s it, no more waifu hologra—just kidding! There are waifu holograms everywhere I looked. The marketing department for this one, called Lepro Ami, takes the weirdness of virtual companionship even further by calling the gadget your “AI soulmate.” I didn’t get a chance to see or try Lepro Ami myself, but I’ll give you one guess what some of the avatars look like. I’ll wait.
On one hand, I’m caught off guard by the number of options for holographic anime girlfriends, but it also makes a lot of sense. AI-powered chatbots are more pervasive than ever, and they’re getting crammed into pretty much any gadget that can accommodate one. And if there’s one thing they’re kind of good at, it’s being mindless sycophants, which I guess is exactly what quite a few companies think you need in a virtual companion.
So, here we are. Mark this one down, folks. This is the year of the waifu hologram.
Gizmodo is on the ground in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here and find all our coverage here.
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