The Fembots are here
Guests of Japan's World Expo opening on March 25 will be greeted by multilingual, rapping robots. The Actroid, shown here, was developed by Kokoro and Advanced Media. She's a twentysomething fembot with dewy skin, warm eyes, and enough AI to understand 40,000 phrases in each of four languages: Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. She also "performs rap music." Snip:More: we make money not art, and Actroid product website is here.The humanoid can put on facial expressions suitable for the more than 2,000 types of answers it can give, but it may refuse to answer to some questions for "privacy reasons," making an X with her arms and bowing. She also has a sense of irony. When asked if she is a robot, she says, "Y.e.s, I. a.m. a. r.o.b.o.t" in a disconnected voice and moves about clumsily. A moment later, she says "Just kidding" and starts a natural flow of movements.
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Xeni Jardin
Boing Boing partner, Boing Boing Video host and executive producer. Xeni.net, Twitter, Google+. Email: xeni@xeni.net.
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