The University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated on Friday its new interactive robot named “Jia Jia” which looks and talks like a real woman.
With Caucasian features, the interactive robot mimics the typical obsession of females to always look pretty by blurting out to the audience, “Don’t come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make by face look fat,” quoted Xinhua News Agency.
The team, which developed “Kejia,” a model service robot, took three years to develop Jia Jia which has speech capability, has micro expressions and moves its body and lips, pointed out Chen Xiaoping, director of the university’s robot research and development team. Its eyeballs roll naturally and the speech is in sync with Jia Jia’s lip movement.
However, it still lacks emotion, admitted Chen that they still need to develop the ability to cry and laugh in Jia Jia. He added that the team hopes to further develop Jia Jia’s deep learning abilities. They plan to add facial expression recognition and have deeper interaction with people.
Chen wants Jia Jia to evolve into a wise robot goddess. The team has no plans to mass reproduce Jia Jia which is on display at the 2015 China (Shanghai) International Technology Fair which runs from April 21 to 23.
Gizmodo pointed out that Jia Jia is bad for women because the robot makes females seem submissive and obsessed with their image. It noted that the robot is “the latest example in a long line of disconcertingly misogynistic robotic enterprise” as the tech website cited the Hong Kong man who made a female robot which looks like actress Scarlett Johansson.