Saudi Arabia’s first male robot was unveiled at the DeepFest event in Riyadh this week, and wasted no time in touching female reporter, Rawiya Al-Qasimi, “inappropriately” during its debut:
Saudi Arabia’s first male robot appears to inappropriately touch a female reporter pic.twitter.com/Ph08JStNYC
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) March 8, 2024
Oh dear. There’s now some debate over whether the robot, named Muhammad, has turned sentient or whether it was just an unfortunate accident where the humanoid robot just happened to extend its hand, maybe for a handshake, but grabbed a palmful of Miss Al-Qasimi’s butt instead.
In any case, the show went on, with the robot announcing to the crowd: “I am Muhammad, the first Saudi robot designed in the form of a man. I was created and developed here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a national initiative to showcase our advancements in artificial intelligence.”
As long as Muhammad really is a robot and not some Saudi dude in disguise, I think we can chalk it up to an unfortunate incident. A bit like the chess robot who broke the fingers of its 7-year-old opponent. Ouch.
