THE world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist, Ai-Da, is the subject of a new exhibition at the Design Museum in London, Britain from May 18 to Aug. 31.

Ai-Da is a humanoid robot named after Ada Lovelace, the pioneering female scientist and mathematician. It has a robotic arm and cameras in its eyes to create self-portraits and uses a cutting-edge language model that allows it to answer questions from onlookers. The exhibition includes a series of self-portraits created by the robot over several days as well as films of it in action and an explanation of the technology used to create the machine.

Completed two years ago, Ai-Da is constantly being updated as artificial intelligence technology becomes more advanced allowing the robot to become even more lifelike in its movements and language.

Art gallery owner Aidan Meller, who was part of the international team behind the project, said it “came out of a deep concern for the way technology in this next few years is going to be very impactful on society.”

He said they deliberately made the robot appear human as they wanted to make a point about the rise of artificial intelligence and how it would become increasingly difficult to “know what is human and what is real.”

He said artificial intelligence used in domestic products was about to go up another level in complexity. “We are going to be having relationships with things for the first time in history. We are going to talk to our car; we are going to talk to our appliances; we are going to talk to our computers and they will talk back. It is a worrying world we’re going into and I think we should be unsettled.”

Lucy Seal, project researcher for Ai-Da, said: “If Ai-Da does just one important thing, it would be to get us considering the blurring in human/machine relations, and encouraging us to think more carefully and more slowly about the choices we make for our future. There are clear advantages that need to be developed and celebrated, however George Orwell’s cautionary messages still remain relevant and we would do well to take heed.”(SD-Agencies)