When it announced that “the world’s first robot artist” would be giving evidence to a parliamentary committee, the House of Lords probably hoped to shake off its sleepy reputation.
Unfortunately, when the Ai-Da robot arrived at the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday, the opposite seemed to occur. Apparently overcome by the stuffy atmosphere, the machine, which resembles a sex doll strapped to a pair of egg whisks, shut down halfway through the evidence session. As its creator, Aidan Meller, scrabbled with power sockets to restart the device, he put a pair of sunglasses on the machine. “When we reset her, she can sometimes pull quite interesting faces,” he explained.
