ROBOTS ARE JUST FOLLOWING THE SCRIPT

Some people turning to automation to replicate handwritten cards, notes

Roger and Vonita Byous were surprised when an anniversary card from their son arrived in the mail. They were even more surprised by the unrecognizable handwriting inside.

“I just started wondering, ‘Whaaat?’” said Roger, 73. “It didn’t look quite right, but we couldn’t figure out why.”

It turned out, the Somerset, Ky., couple later learned, their son hadn’t picked up the pen that scripted his heartfelt congratulations on 48 years of wedded bliss.

A robot had.

“It wasn’t exactly a personal touch,” Roger said, but “we’re glad he remembered us.”

Digitization has long reached deep into people’s lives: Family photos are in the cloud. Mom’s recipes are indexed on an app. Breakups can arrive overnight, via text. Now technology is being deployed to try to replicate a human touch, as a growing number of consumers turn to pen-wielding robots that can mimic the loops and patterns of the human hand.

These robot-scribed cards and letters are testing the proposition that machines can generate the intimacy of a handwritten note. Some services include smudges and ink blots in their mailings. Others program the robots to be imprecise — varying the pressure on the pens, for example, or inconsistently sizing characters and spacing — to make the writing appear believably human.

At Handwrytten, a fast-growing service in Phoenix, robots are outfitted with Pilot G2 pens in blue ink because, founder David Wachs says, it’s “more realistic-looking” than black. The pens also offer an advan

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DAVIS WINBORNE PHOTOS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Engineers Michael Davis (left) and Justin Seganti work on a printing machine last month at Handwrytten in Phoenix. The robots that write cards and notes work 24 hours a day and send Slack messages when they’re running out of paper or ink.

Robots use Pilot G2 pens with blue ink, deemed more realistic-looking than black ink.