AI robot sexually harasses woman within seconds of being unveiled

A male AI robot sexually harassed a woman seconds after it was first unveiled in Saudi Arabia.

Artificial intelligence is at the forefront of modern technology as is being trained by humans to conduct some of the most incredible feats, like speaking several languages fluently and laughing at its own jokes.

But all the while AI is trained on data sets from humans, there are fears it will continue to reflect inequalities in our society – something that was demonstrated perfectly when a male “humanoid” robot appeared to inappropriately touch a female reporter.

“Muhammad the Humanoid Robot” was unveiled by Saudi robotics company QSS at DeepFest in Riyadh.

The humanoid was dressed as a traditional Saudi man and was unveiled during a presentation where Al Arabiya reporter, Rawya Kassem, was presenting to the audience.

In a viral clip, the humanoid appeared to move its hand forward to touch Kassem’s bottom. The female reporter turned around and looked at the robot.

Speaking to the Metro, QSS explained that the robot was “fully autonomous” and was operating “independently without direct human control”.

It added that it had “proactively informed all attendees, including reporters, to maintain a safe distance from the robot during its demonstration”.

The clip went viral and sparked a conversation over AI and the data it is learning from.

One person wrote: “The fact that this got into the training data for the AI is worrying. This is why training data should be vetted to be free of racism, sexism and any other form of discrimination.

“Also, why even do gendered robots in the first place?”

QSS told Metro it had observed footage of the incident and concluded there were “no deviations from expected behavior” of Muhammad.

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