You Are Completely Unprepared for What This Humanoid Servant Robot Looks Like
In a bid to separate its bipedal household laborer from the far creepier competition, 1X wrapped Neo Gamma in what it's calling a KnitSuit, an eyebrow-raising onesie that's "soft to the touch and flexible for dynamic movements."
It's a fascinating choice with some eerie results. Despite its full-body sweater, Neo Gamma's face is a more conventional panel of black plastic, dotted with an unsettling pair of set-back eyes. It's as if evil scientists crossed Baymax from Disney's "Big Hero 6" with Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-donning antagonist from the "Friday The 13th" film series — with maybe a splash of Oogie Boogie from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the haunted sack guys from "9."
"There is a not-so-distant future where we all have our own robot helper at home, like Rosey the Robot or Baymax," said 1X CEO Bernt Børnich in a statement. "But for humanoid robots to truly integrate into everyday life, they must be developed alongside humans, not in isolation."
But whether any of what 1X showed off in its Apple-like promotional video will ever turn into a reality is awfully hazy. In a press release, the company claims the design is only a "first step" and "opens the door to start internal home testing."
In other words, don't expect Neo Gamma to go on sale any time soon — although, as is typical in the hype-fueled tech sector, the company is simultaneously promising exactly that, even as it manages expectations.
"With NEO Gamma, every engineering and design decision was made with one goal in mind: getting NEO into customers' homes as quickly as possible," Børnich promised. "We're close. We can't wait to share more soon."
1X is far from the first company to show off a flashy humanoid robot designed to help out in the home. Elon Musk's Tesla, for instance, is working on its own bidepal assistant, dubbed Optimus. But despite plenty of fanfare, the EV maker has employed a lot of smoke and mirrors to make up for reality failing to live up to some pretty bold claims so far.
California-based AI robotics company Figure has also shown off an AI-powered humanoid that can talk courtesy of OpenAI's large language models. The company claims on its website that the second generation of its robot, Figure 02, is the "world's first commercially-viable autonomous humanoid robot" — but has yet to announce price or availability.
Interestingly, 1X also received funding from OpenAI last year as part of a $100 million series, in another sign of the hype for humanoid robots that can talk to their masters with the help of generative AI.
But despite the attention and investments being poured into the industry, nobody really knows when — or if — we'll see robots like Neo Gamma being offered to consumers. The engineering challenges are immense, and whether they can prove to be actually useful in a home setting, let alone be affordable to those who aren't hugely wealthy, remains to be seen.
At least we'll give 1X credit for a creative new twist on the otherwise uncanny aesthetics of robotics, filled with creepy facial expressions and twitching extremities.
More on humanoid robots: Tesla's Robots Were Just Remotely Controlled Dummies, Analyst Confirms
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
27 minutes ago
- Forbes
Actor Ike Barinholtz Will Play Elon Musk In Sam Altman OpenAI Movie
Actor Ike Barinholtz is in talks to portray the world's richest person, Elon Musk, in an upcoming comedy-drama movie that will reportedly center on the brief ousting of billionaire Sam Altman from the helm of OpenAI in 2023. Elon Musk will reportedly be portrayed in the upcoming film "Artificial." (Photo by Chip ...) Getty Images The upcoming film, 'Artificial,' is still in development at Amazon MGM Studios and is expected to shoot later this year with a planned release for 2026, multiple outlets reported. Actor Ike Barinholtz, who recently scored an Emmy nomination for his role in 'The Studio,' is in talks to play Elon Musk in the film, multiple outlets reported Wednesday. Andrew Garfield is attached to play another billionaire, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, with actor Yura Borisov also set to play OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Though few details of the plot are known, the film is described as a comedy-drama about the few days between Altman's firing and re-hiring as OpenAI's CEO in November 2023. Luca Guadagnino, known for his films including 'Call Me By Your Name' and 'Challengers,' is directing the project. Forbes has reached out to Amazon MGM Studios for comment. Matthew Belloni, entertainment reporter at Puck, claimed he obtained a copy of the 'Artificial' script, stating Musk and Altman will 'probably hate their portrayals' and that Musk is referred to as a 'dictator' at one point in the script. Belloni noted the script is a draft and could change before the movie shoots, but said Musk appears in a few scenes of 'villainy and comic relief.' Other billionaires included in the draft, according to Belloni, include former OpenAI vice president of research and current Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Why Was Sam Altman Fired From Openai? Altman, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and was installed as CEO in 2019, was fired from his post on Nov. 17, 2023 by the company's board, which said it no longer had 'confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.' In its statement, the board accused Altman of not being candid with it, though the details surrounding his firing, which was considered a shock, were unclear. The following year, board member Helen Toner, who helped oust Altman, said Altman made the board's job 'really difficult' by 'withholding information, misrepresenting things that were happening at the company' and sometimes 'outright lying to the board,' alleging he did not inform the board about ChatGPT's 2022 release. She also claimed two executives said they had endured 'psychological abuse' and a 'toxic atmosphere' crafted by Altman. Hundreds of employees threatened to quit OpenAI after Altman's firing, and on Nov. 22, the board announced Altman would be reinstated. Sutskever, who is portrayed in 'Artificial,' was reportedly a leader of the effort to remove Altman, though he later expressed regret for the ouster and signed the open letter threatening to quit unless Altman was reinstated. Musk has been parodied multiple times on 'Saturday Night Live,' which he lambasted in posts on X. After Dana Carvey tackled Musk in a post-election episode in November, Musk tweeted 'SNL' has been 'dying slowly for years, as they become increasingly out of touch with reality.' In a separate post, he said 'Dana Carvey just sounds like Dana Carvey.' Musk was parodied months later by Mike Myers, prompting the billionaire to post: 'SNL hasn't been funny in a long time. They are their own parody.' Musk hosted 'SNL' in 2021, and three years later, cast member Chloe Fineman said he was 'rude' on set and made her cry by calling a sketch she had written 'not funny.' Forbes Valuation Forbes estimates Musk's net worth at $415 billion as of Wednesday, making him the wealthiest person in the world. He owns about 12% of Tesla and 42% of SpaceX, both of which he co-founded. Altman is worth $1.8 billion, according to Forbes estimates, largely from his investments in Stripe, Reddit and other companies. Further Reading Luca Guadagnino to Direct True-Life OpenAI Movie 'Artificial' for Amazon MGM (Hollywood Reporter)
Boston Globe
28 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
‘Washington Black' has sky-high ambitions, but a steampunk setting and attention to character ground it
Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown), a friend of Wash and our trusty narrator, begins the tale with a roadmap: 'It's about family lost and family found. A story about a young man and the boy he used to be. The story of a boy brave enough to change the world. … If he can beat it, maybe we can, too. That's why this just ain't his story. It's our story.' To be clear: There is value here; this is a show worth watching. In an era when Black narratives are being scrubbed from Advertisement Wash makes his great escape from the plantation via 'cloud-cutter,' a blimp-like flying machine designed by his master's brother, the abolitionist Christopher 'Titch' Wilde (Tom Ellis). The pair crash land into a pirate ship. Onboard, Wash befriends first mate Barrington (Miles Yekinni), who is from Guyana. Hinds is also a Guyana native, and the writing gives real depth to the tenderness with which Barrington describes the home he left long ago. Barrington is a fully free man, he tells Wash. 'But your skin like mine,' young Wash points out. 'No matter how strong the bondage, we never stop pushin' back,' Barrington replies. 'We fight.' He teaches Wash about He hears Nat's Southern drawl and says, 'But you and I are different.' It's the same reaction as with Barrington: A confused child sees someone the same, but somehow not. 'No, boy, we all come from the same place,' Nat replies. 'We've been scattered across this white man's world for so long, surviving on the scraps he gives, some of us don't even remember anything else.' Advertisement Add in Medwin, who Wash meets years later (adult Wash is played by Ernest Kingsley Junior) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the point gets driven to smithereens. Medwin is much more of a father figure — and a keeper of the community — here than in the book, which allows Sterling K. Brown (also an executive producer) to bite into the material with his considerable acting chops. 'Why look out for me like you do?' Wash asks him. 'Only way Black folk gon' climb this mountain is if we pull each other along,' Medwin replies. But there is value here, too, beyond this main point, hammered home so hard. Hinds' adaptation focuses much more on Wash's love interest, Tanna Goff (Iola Evans). She's the daughter of a British marine scientist named G.M. Goff (Rupert Graves) — with whom she dives for ocean specimens — and the show makes a point of giving her complexities, wants, and backstory. This iteration makes Ryan B. Coogler's recent ' of life within that identity. By fleshing out Tanna's backstory — and by showing us her mother and family in the Solomon Islands — this adaptation adds dimension, both to the narrative itself, and to the love story between Tanna and Wash. 'We're both dreamers,' she tells him. 'Can't we dream up a different world?' Advertisement "Washington Black" makes ample use of its steampunk setting. Cristian Salvatierra/Disney And then there is the glorious steampunk of it all. There are notes of steampunk in the book — primarily in Titch's lighter-than-air airship, a hallmark of the genre — but the full flavor comes flooding through in the TV version. Titch arrives on-screen for the first time in a gleaming copper steam-powered truck; the pirate ship has an engine, driven by a perpetual motor, all wheels and coils; and the Goffs' diving suit, with its heavy metal helmet, is very Jules Verne. All of this lends wonder and levity to what can otherwise be serious and heavy subject matter. Steampunk is, of course, punk. It is by its very nature countercultural, anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian. So it makes sense that 'Washington Black' aims to fly high, to imagine a better future. Edugyan's novel asks: What is true freedom? Hinds' version tries to answer: It is the ability to dream up a different world, alongside family lost and family found. It's an admirable ambition, but — at least in the first four episodes available to review — we don't see that world yet. This show has a salient point to make, but can't quite seem to get there organically. Maybe those last four episodes will get us there — or maybe we have to dream up a different world ourselves. WASHINGTON BLACK Starring: Eddie Karanja, Ernest Kingsley Junior, Iola Evans, Sterling K. Brown, Tom Ellis. On Hulu
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Adobe's CTO is getting more creative on the software maker's approach to generating ‘safe' AI tools
The proliferation of artificial intelligence image and video generators has made it easy for online users to create billions of memes ranging from baby versions of The Real Housewives of Atlanta to humorous takes on the Coldplay kiss cam viral moment just a few days ago. But these tools have raised serious legal questions about the copyright protection for the assets that these AI models are trained on. That has resulted in numerous lawsuits being filed by individual artists, Hollywood studios, and media companies, who all assert that some of the most popular AI systems are trained on unauthorized images and videos. Ongoing litigation includes Disney and Universal suing image generation tool Midjourney, the New York Times squaring up against ChatGPT owner OpenAI and Microsoft, and the Wall Street Journal and New York Post versus AI startup Perplexity. Ely Greenfield, chief technology officer at software maker Adobe's digital media business, has spent over two years pitching a different path. Ever since the debut of a text-to-image model known as Firefly in March 2023, Adobe has touted the company's own creative generative AI models that are only trained on content that it has rights to use, including Adobe Stock photos and licensed artistic content. Firefly's models have been integrated in Adobe's suite of apps including Photoshop and Illustrator, and thus far, businesses and individual creators have generated over 26 billion assets. Big names including toy maker Mattel and cosmetics manufacturer Estée Lauder have signed on to Firefly for creative ideation, editing, and asset generation purposes. 'Every piece of content that we train on is something that we have acquired the license of, or that is published under a verifiable and known license,' says Greenfield. This approach does come with some limitations. If Firefly were asked to generate an image of a Disney cartoon character, like say Mickey Mouse, 'it would do a horrible job of it,' concedes Greenfield. 'And that's by design and on purpose.' Greenfield says that AI tools based on every image found on the internet produce less desired outputs, not just for potentially infringing on IP, but because it is representative of a vast trove of data that doesn't always have the best quality. 'There's the raw science of how you build the model, but a massive amount of work goes into data curation and preparation,' says Greenfield. 'The average piece of content on the internet isn't necessarily what you want to put in your ad.' Adobe's buttoned-up AI approach means the company's off-the-shelf Firefly offering would have little use to a consumer-facing company like Coca-Cola. But under an enterprise licensing agreement, Adobe says it can train a private version of Firefly that's exclusively trained on the beverage company's branding and style. Since Firefly's launch, Adobe has had to make some modifications to the images in the company's asset bank. Early on, generative AI wasn't great at producing clear images of hands, so Adobe had to reach out to the photographers it works with to get more licensed pictures of hands to train the AI properly. All Firefly content also goes through a moderation process that includes a mix of human and computer oversight, eliminating harmful images, but also those that may contain sensitive IP. A photographer may have exclusive license to an image that they produced, but if there's a trademark asset like a Nike Swoosh or Starbucks Siren logo, Adobe will nix the image. Adobe has lauded the proliferation of Firefly, reporting in the most recent second fiscal quarter ending May 30 that traffic to the Firefly App grew 30% from the prior quarter, with paid subscriptions nearly doubling over the same period. More recently, Adobe has integrated image and video models from OpenAI, Google, Pika Luma AI, and Runway into the company's Firefly app. This runs parallel with the public's shifting views on the ethical uses of AI, as well as some recent court decisions that AI hyperscalers have won. Anthropic, in one example, saw a ruling go its way last month that said the company could train models using published books without consent from the authors. To be sure, it will be years before the courts resolve these thorny legal matters, and the right use of images, text, and audio assets will almost certainly vary across the globe. For Adobe, Greenfield says pulling in these partnership models reflected an evolution to how creative professionals are working with AI today. He says that customers want access to a wide variety of AI models, especially as these technologies quickly advance. This is similar to the multi-modal approach most CTOs and chief information officers have embraced when deploying AI coding tools for software developers or the application of other uses of AI in marketing, legal, and communications to improve worker productivity. Adobe has added content credentials to make it clear to marketers when the assets they are creating are safe to use for commercial production (with Firefly) versus for ideation purposes (the external partner models). Customers have the final say on what path works best for them. 'We have a lot of customers who have different opinions on when to use different types of models and how they feel about commercial safety,' says Greenfield. 'A lot of them feel that in ideation, they're open to using anything.' John Kell Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here. Fortune recently unveiled a new ongoing series, Fortune AIQ, dedicated to navigating AI's real-world impact. Our third collection of stories explores how businesses across virtually every industry are putting AI to work—and how their particular field is changing as a result. How Walmart, Amazon, and other retail giants are using AI to reinvent the supply chain—from warehouse to checkout. Read more Meet the legacy players and upstarts using AI to reinvent the energy business. Read more AI isn't just entering law offices—it's challenging the entire legal playbook. Read more How a bulldozer, crane, and excavator rental company is using AI to save 3,000 hours per week. Read more AI is already touching nearly every corner of the medical field. Read more This story was originally featured on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
