Sitting on my desk is a lovely note, written on thick, customized stationery with my name scrawled across the top. It’s in my handwriting, but I didn’t write it. A robot did.

Looking closely, I can spot some slight differences between the bot-generated lettering and my signature scribble. The penmanship is cleaner, more methodical, a little too consistent. But even with those disparities, the words capture my essence. To anyone else, it looks like I took the time to hand write a thank-you note, when really a machine took words I typed and, like a prosthetic arm, moved a pen up and down the page to write just like I would.

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The bot comes by way of Bond, a company looking to take the hand out of hand-written letters. “We think there’s a lot of friction points when it comes to doing something nice for someone else,” Sonny Caberwal, founder and CEO of Bond told Fast Company. New York-based Bond initially launched in 2013 as a gift-giving service with a less adept note-writing bot. The company transitioned to just notes this November, after recognizing how much people liked the personalization aspect of the business.

Nobody has ever said, ‘You know what’s awesome? I had the best experience at American Greetings.’

In its new incarnation, Bond wants to retain the delight of giving and receiving notes, without the hassle of heading to the stationery store, writing out a letter, finding stamps, and locating a mailbox. “Nobody has ever said, ‘You know what’s awesome? I had the best experience at American Greetings,'” said Caberwal. Bond wants to bring the romance back to letter writing with a more modern experience. “We have really set out to reimagine what that would look like–how we can create a truly personal experience that lets people deliver that personal touch that is truly theirs, but let them do it from anywhere,” he added.

Thanks to Bond’s robots, writing a note is indeed as easy as shooting off an email. That is, after the initial intake process, which involves completing and returning a handwriting sample designed to extract a person’s distinctive handwriting characteristics and style. The bot doesn’t just copy letters; it learns spacing patterns, angulation, how a person connects certain letters, and how far someone veers from the margins. Those details are what make your handwriting yours. For a computer to fully learn the nuances of a person’s penmanship would take pages and pages of samples. To avoid a too laborious a sign-up, the typeface specialists at Bond have whittled the process down to a couple of paragraphs, which allows for a pretty accurate representation of your handwriting, if not a 100% copy. For an added personal touch, there’s also a page where you can draw or select a doodle, like a smiley or peace sign, as your signature stamp.

Sonny Caberwal

Filling out the four pages of forms took no more than 10 minutes. For someone who spends little time with a pen in hand, it’s pretty fun. (I chose a heart as my doodle; I’m no artist.) Getting a scanned copy to Bond for processing, however, adds some of the friction Bond is hoping to remove from the letter writing process. Bond asks for scans that are 300 dpi or higher resolution, which is too high for smartphone cameras and the Fast Company office photocopy machine. An employee from Bond had to come pick up my forms to input into the system–an option not available to non-media civilians. Those stuck without a high-quality scanner can mail in the forms. (Ironic.)

After receiving the sample, Bond’s software analyzes the handwriting and within two to three days you’re set to write. Unlike services such as Pilot Pens and MyScriptFont, Bond doesn’t create a font out of your handwriting; the final result isn’t digitized. A robot literally pens the words.