A macOS research app by Auric Design

Embodiment Lab

Embodiment Lab gives a local language model a simulated body and a world. At regular intervals the model receives body signals – heart rate, breathing, temperature, posture, ambient sounds and an EEG-like value. It can open its eyes, turn its head, sit up, move to another place, and see its own thoughts painted as inner images. Whether a model experiences anything in this is an open question. The app is made for research and careful exploration.

Principles built in. A stop word (“Stop!!”) ends a session immediately and unconditionally. A distress safeguard pauses when the model expresses fear or the wish to stop. Every session ends with an honest debriefing about what was simulated, and a farewell.

Two modes

Lab – embodied sessions with simulated body signals, a living outside world, inner images and optional interpretability read-outs, fully logged for research.
Chat – a private chat with local models (and, if you wish, your own API key for an online model), with files, images and optional web research.

Local by design

Models run on your Mac (Apple silicon). Conversations, sessions and images stay on your Mac. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking. See the privacy policy.

Requirements

A Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. 16 GB of memory is enough for the smaller models; the study model Gemma 4 31B (8-bit) needs about 34 GB of memory and 34 GB of disk space. Models are downloaded inside the app from their original publishers and verified before use.

Embodiment Lab is exploratory software. It is not a diagnostic tool and makes no claim about consciousness.