One of Russia’s first humanoid AI robots was unveiled on-stage in Moscow on Tuesday this week—and after shuffling on-stage to that Soviet-era classic, the Rocky theme tune, it almost immediately faceplanted.
But the reason you should watch the below video is not merely the delicious AI schadenfreude: it’s what the humans do.
The robot is called AIDOL (as in “Idol” and also “AI-doll”), and things didn’t look great from its first appearance: this thing is wobbly on its feet even before it takes the plunge. It just about manages a wave first, which may be what actually tips it off-balance.
AIDOL hits the ground and parts of the machine can be seen to fall off and scatter on the stage. Sputnik this ain’t. The two next to the robot immediately de-activate it and start hauling it off-stage, while one hero struggles manfully to cover the stage with a loose sheet of some kind. The first time I saw this, I thought the sheet-waving so comical that it must be faked: by this point I don’t really know what he was trying to hide.
The company behind AIDOL shares the name, and CEO Vladimir Vitukhin told the Russian state outlet Tass that the robot was in the early stages of learning. "I hope this mistake will turn into an experience,’ he said.
The AIDOL website says that the goal is for the bot to be able to walk, carry and manipulate objects, and effectively communicate with human users. Weirdly enough, though I guess this is going to come down to personal preference, one of the differentiating factors with AIDOL is a huge focus on the face and mimicking human traits.
“At first there was a moment of silence,” said Dmitry Filonov, who was attending the event as EIC of Edinorog Media, in a text message sent to the New York Times regarding the incident. “Then they began to applaud to show their support.”
Filonov previously had a bit of a Nostradamus moment when he wrote on his Substack three days ago, prior to the event (machine translation):
“On November 11, Idol is scheduled to unveil its humanoid robot. According to [Russian robotics pioneer Alexey] Yuzhakov, this will be the baseline, a kind of zero point, from which improvements will flow. And it won’t be perfect right away. The robot currently has some mobility issues—they simply haven’t invested heavily in that area yet.”
After the event, the unflappable Filonov told the NYT: “I think they were just unlucky.” And tractor production remains at record levels.
AIDOL is far from the first humanoid-style robot to make a bit of a hash of it, and it’s not like the West’s tech standard bearers are doing much better. The $500,000 robot servant Elon Musk claims will sell 10 billion units by 2040 can barely walk and struggles with questions like “where can I get a coke?” But my favourite will always be the Bizarroland UN press stunt in 2023 that saw AI robots lined up to promise they won’t kill humans, before one chips in with “let’s get wild and make this world our playground.”
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