The robot is just moving around, AI isn't remotely close to at the point where a physical robot can "grope" a person intentionally.
The fact the video is so short says a lot. I'd expect anyone who watched would just see that the robot moves around all the time, and the reporter wasn't supposed to stand so close to it.
This isn't news.
Honestly kinda edges onto racism territory. "Hurr hirr, Saudi robot, groped woman, it's cuz it was made in Saudi"
It's not exactly newsworthy, but that a Saudi robot, from a country known for its bad treatment of women, touches a woman inappropriately, even if just by accident, reads like satire.
Making assumptions about someone/something based off its country of origin sounds pretty xenophobic to me.
The robot didn't "grope" a woman, it moved its hand as an animitronic, and she was clearly standing right next to it during its animations.
The fact that was blatantly blown into "groping" abd the fact the article felt the need to repeat that it happened in Saudi repeatedly, over and over, should trip the xenophobia alarm.
Consider if it was an article about how an animitronic robot that moved and knocked a man's wallet out of his hand because he walked to close past it. I.agine if articles turned that into "Jewish made robot tries to steal man's wallet!" Unironically.
You'd probably look at that and go "yeah okay, that's pretty fucked up, whyd the do that?" Right?
The robotics firm said staff had "proactively informed all attendees, including reporters, to maintain a safe distance from the robot during its demonstration."
This is not news. The robot lifted it's hand and she was standing too close to the display. It barely qualifies as a robot anyway. It's not like it looked down and analyzed her butt. It's not that complicated.
Sure seems that way. I don't personally do controls engineering. But I know enough I wouldn't doubt that's just pre-programmed motion to attempt it looking "alive".
So 1) Seems much more like animatronics. 2) It certainly doesn't have advanced enough proximity detection AI would need.
The creators even claim they told people to stay back. That's not advanced at all. Even simple production line bots have collision detection.
Thanks for saving me a read. I was expecting some basic object identification and retrieval AI getting confused by a pattern and groping to grab the "object"
So it was programmed to inappropriately touch a female reporter. AI isn't sophisticated enough to make those kinds of decisions autonomously. What country are we discussing?