Hiroshi Ishiguro created his first robot more than 35 years ago. And in the last 18 years, he has made six different robot clones of himself. These clones, which he calls Geminoids, are essentially android clones modeled after his own image. The latest android clone, dubbed Geminoid HI-6, is the most life-like yet, and it can even answer questions and give lectures to students.
Ishiguro has been inventing new things for as long as he can remember. He told CNBC that the robot was designed to make his life easier by taking over some of the tasks that he just doesn’t have time for anymore.
One of the biggest features of the latest android clone is the fact that it is conversational, Ishiguro explained in an interview, which you can see in the video embedded below. Ishiguro and the other engineers behind the android’s creation integrated it with a large language model, and then he inputted all of his media interviews and ten of his books into the model.
This means the robot can effectively answer questions about his work almost as well as he can. Ishiguro says that he was initially just using the robot to give lectures when he was too busy to fit them into his schedule. However, now, with the additional input and support of the large language model, the Geminoid HI-6 can actually answer questions the audience asks, too.
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Looking at the android clone in the video, it’s easy to tell it isn’t a real person. But, if you were to see it from far off, it might be convincing enough to confuse you. Still, that isn’t what makes all of this so eerie. No, that comes in the fact that the robot can actually copy Ishiguro’s facial expressions—something that looks a bit uncanny valley when you see it for the first time.
There’s still a long way to go before these Geminoids are walking around like robot butlers. Ishiguro says it can’t walk yet, but he hopes to give it a biped mechanism in the “near future.” While inventors like Ishiguro have been working to create clones like this, others have been making rifle-toting robots and even robots with flamethrowers.
