Robots That Can Look Like You

A Russian company has announced the mass production of human-like robots which they have claimed can be made to the likeness of literally anyone, as well as imitating their movements! This means there could be robots that can look like you. The bots are capable of moving their eyebrows and essentially all other basic facial muscles in order to display emotion. On top of this, the company also claims that they are also capable of answering questions in a realistic manner making them an effective companion. The robot has been dubbed the “Android Robo-C”, and allegedly can use its life-like artificial skin to emulate over 600 unique facial expressions.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Promobot, Aleksei Luzhakov, stated “Everyone will now be able to order a robot with any appearance – for professional or personal use.” a somewhat ominous-sounding statement. The way he further attempted to sell the idea was by saying, “Imagine a replica of Michael Jordan selling basketball uniforms and William Shakespeare reading his own texts in a museum” an interesting if not slightly creepy idea. “We can build a linguistic model based on popular phrases of a particular person – the robot will communicate and answer questions by analyzing frequent expressions of the “original” and using a certain context of knowledge of this person.”

Buying Robots that Can Look Like You

The business has apparently had several orders for the robots already and has also begun talks with companies to use the robots for customer service purposes. Promobot co-founder, Oleg Kivokurtsev has told news agencies that he plans for his company to reach an output of 10 robots sold per month, again for both professional and personal use. The public will eventually be able to buy this remarkable robot.

This isn’t the first time in recent times that this company has made big news, back in 2016 they made headlines as they claimed they were considering shutting down their Promobot IR77 project after it had made its supposed second attempt at escaping the development facilities! In the first incident, the robot allegedly made it 150 feet away from the laboratory after a member of staff at the company forgot to close a door. As many news outlets have pointed out, the whole thing was most likely a publicity stunt, especially because the company does have a reputation for falsely “bigging themselves up”.

Probably the biggest talking point about this whole thing is obviously the morals of it. If these robots really are as advanced as the company is claiming, then this type of technology could be massively misused. Once released this type of technology would no doubt be imitated and then could be used for immoral things such as fraudulence or bringing someone falsely back to life. Laws would no doubt be put in place about the bots, however setting laws and then efficiently enforcing them are two very different things! This is why some people are against technology that produces robots that can look like you, but also why many others think it is no more than a hoax.