Saudi Arabia now has a matching pair of male and female humanoid robots whose AI is coded to be culturally aligned with the nation’s values.
Just weeks after the male robot, Muhammed, groped a women’s bottom at its debut event, its creator has revealed that a female version, Sarah, was programmed to refuse conversations about sex or politics.
Discussing either topic openly is illegal for real Saudi women under Sharia law.
Sara ‘knows that she’s a girl, she’s 25 years old, she’s 1.62m [5ft, 3in], she’s wearing Saudi clothing,’ according to the CEO of the Riyadh-based firm QSS AI & Robots.
Saudi Arabia now has a matching pair of male and female humanoid robots with artificial intelligence (AI) that’s culturally Saudi – meaning the ‘woman’ (Sara, above) won’t discuss forbidden topics like sex and politics
A 3D design of the Sara robot’s endo-skeleton (left), which provided a first step toward Saudi company QSS’s manufacturing of the female robot. ‘She should be nice, not talking politics, not talking sex,’ the firm’s CEO said this month, ‘because we’re in Saudi Arabia’
CEO Elie Metri said Sara’s counterpart Muhammed had just been clumsy, an all too human trait in close quarters.
‘While humans are speaking, we move hands,’ Metri said. ‘We are not mannequins. It’s the same for a robot.’
Like Muhammed, who is clad in traditional Saudi clothing of a red keffiyeh and long gown, Sara wears a traditional abaya, a long-flowing modest dress, and a headscarf-like hijab — both symbols of Islamic piety in the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation.
Metri boasted that Sara speaks both English and Arabic and that the large language model (LLM) AI that powers her conversational skills doesn’t ‘rely on anyone else’s libraries, not even ChatGPT.’
This unique approach, according to news site Asharq Al Awsat, means that Sara can detect and understand a variety of different Saudi dialects.
When addressed by a ‘Hello, Sara,’ the AI springs into action, analyzing sentences, and then providing, as the site put it, ‘the appropriate answer.’
That definition of appropriate, of course, is uniquely Saudi for QSS’s female humanoid.
‘She should be nice, not talking politics, not talking sex,’ Metri told Business Insider, ‘because we’re in Saudi Arabia.’
Tommy Deblieck, the Co-CEO of Zorarobotics which partnered with the Saudi firm, told reporters the goal for both Sara and Muhammed is to make them both compatible with a host of 2,000 smart sensors, wearables and other ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices on the market
While the two humanoid bots may be the product of domestic Saudi parts and technical labor — and bear the nation’s ‘Saudi Made’ branding — both were manufactured and programed in partnership with Belgian firm Zorabotics.
The European tech firm’s handiwork can also be seen in the pint-sized, 23-in. Nao V6 bipedal robot, designed to be ‘a programmable personal teaching assistant.’
Tommy Deblieck, the Co-CEO of Zorarobotics, told reporters that the goal for both Sara and Muhammed is to make them compatible with a host of third-party smart sensors, wearables and other ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices on the market.
By interacting with humans via a system of microphones, cameras and their AI chatbot skills, both of QSS’s gendered humanoid robots could then be able to act as a person’s point of contact with an array of smart devices in their real life, not unlike a traditional concierge or personal assistant.
‘This QSS-project is not finished,’ Deblieck told Robotics and Automation News.
While the two humanoid bots may be the product of domestic Saudi parts and technical labor,, both were manufactured and programed in partnership with Belgian firm Zorabots, whose work can also be seen in the ZoraBots Nao V6 (above)
‘In the next phase ‘Sara’ will be linked to IOT making her capable of linking and controlling millions of smart devices from more than 2,000 global brands.’
That effort will involve making sure Sara is capable speaking a third language: so-called MQTT standards-based messaging protocol, which lets machines talk to machines efficiently, taking up only limited bandwidth.
The Flemish executive also teased that his QSS partners in Riyadh plan to ‘develop a Saudi virtual world where ‘Sara’ plays a central role,’ likely linked to the country’s flagship ‘city of the future’ project, NEOM: the site of a daring, underground luxury skyscraper, the world’s largest skypool, dubbed an ‘elevated heaven,’ and perhaps one-day robotic servants, like Sara and Muhammed, as part of its futuristic amenities.
Sara was first unveiled at Saudi Arabia’s LEAP/DeepFest 2023 event in February of last year.
Muhammed debuted this March as part of LEAP/DeepFest 2024, where his controversial apparent butt-pat was caught on video.
Despite some efforts to modernize in recent years, Saudi Arabia’s legal system is still based on religious Sharia law, derived from the centuries-old teachings of Islam.
The results can often be brutal, particularly in Sharia’s approval of capital punishment, with 29 people already executed this year, less than three months into 2024. At least seven of this year’s executions were beheadings.
Women are especially impacted by the strict, gendered legal system, which can punish them for taking part in political activism or discussing sex in public.
Samara Iqbal, an attorney for Manchester-based Aramas International Lawyers, told Mail Online this January that she has started to warn women enticed by the marriage proposals of Middle Eastern royalty and aristocrats.
Iqbal’s firm has opened new branches in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to deal with the influx of new cases.
‘I see so many girls who say they’re going overseas with a rich prince, thinking nothing can now go wrong,’ She told Mail Online, ‘more and more British women are doing so.’
‘But if he wants to suddenly cut her off, he can do […] he can literally throw her on the streets.’
‘We’re seeing more and more people who have married and moved out to the Middle East, thinking they’ve being given a luxury lifestyle, but it only lasts so long — and the courts will go against her.’
Conscious perhaps of Saudi Arabia’s reputation in the West, Metri noted that his firm’s Muhammed robot had been merely gesticulating while talking when the bot looked like it touched the behind of news reporter Rawya Kassem of Dubai’s Al Arabiya channel.
Kassem, he said, simply got too close to the lightly-bearded, Saudi humanoid.
‘Sexual assault is totally different from a robot hand touching the jacket of a lady,’ he explained, although his QSS staff, according to Metro UK, warned other attendees to ‘maintain a safe distance from the robot during its demonstration.’
