LAS VEGAS, NV — The Sapien Forq, a Wi-Fi-enabled titanium utensil unveiled Sunday at CES, will retail for $899 and ship with a six-month subscription to a service that gently scolds users for chewing too quickly and, by default, forwards a weekly digest to a designated family member.
The product, demoed in Booth 41202 by a man wearing a vest with seventeen lanyards, was described as ‘the world’s first emotionally attuned cutlery’ and ‘a meaningful intervention in the loneliness epidemic.’ It vibrates softly when a bite is taken within four seconds of the previous one, and louder when the user is, in the company’s words, ‘eating standing up again.’
The default contact field at setup is labeled ‘Mom,’ and cannot be left blank without scrolling through a 90-second video about gut health.
‘We’re not surveilling anyone,’ said Korbin Wexlund-Tate, chief product officer at the parent company Mindful Hardware Group. ‘We’re surfacing care. If your mother learns from a Sunday-evening email that you ate a microwave burrito over the sink in forty-three seconds, that’s not data. That’s intimacy.’
Other features include a ‘Slow Down, Champ’ haptic mode, a leaderboard that ranks the user against their three closest contacts, and a premium tier that enables the fork to refuse to lift food until the user takes three deep breaths. The fork must be charged nightly and cannot be put in the dishwasher.
Adjacent booths Sunday included a $2,200 trash can that compliments your recycling, a refrigerator that writes haiku about its contents, and a smart pillow that emails your therapist if you stay up past 1 a.m. ‘Everything here has AI in the name,’ confirmed one badged attendee, gesturing at a folding chair company called ChairGPT. ‘That folding chair has AI in the name. I asked. They couldn’t tell me where.’
The Sapien Forq’s launch video features a woman in a sunlit kitchen pausing mid-bite, smiling at the fork, and saying ‘thank you.’ She is alone. The fork, per the chyron, is helping her be present.
Pre-orders briefly outpaced supply Sunday afternoon, prompting the company to release a second SKU at $1,199 that includes a matching knife the fork can text. The knife does not have its own features.
Reached for comment, a woman identified in promotional materials only as ‘Karen, Beta Tester, Phoenix’ said her son had blocked the digest email after the second week. ‘He says he’s an adult,’ she said. ‘But the fork told me he ate cereal for dinner on Tuesday. Twice.’