Named Sara, Saudi Arabia has released footage of its first humanoid robot, which has been designed and programmed to adhere to cultural values, including avoiding discussion of sex and politics.
The humanoid was developed by Riyadh-based QSS AI & Robots and is dressed in an abaya, a traditional item of clothing.
The robot is powered by a proprietary large language model (LLM) developed by QSS, which is reportedly not reliant on external data sets, such as those from ChatGPT.
The AI powering her is designed to avoid certain topics of conversation.
Explaining the design, Elie Metri, CEO of QSS AI & Robots, to Business Insider, said: “Sara knows that she’s a girl, she’s 25 years old, she’s 1.62 centimetres, she’s wearing Saudi clothing.”
Other traits emphasised by Metri include that Sara “should be nice” and that she should not discuss politics and sex “because [she is] in Saudi Arabia. It shouldn’t go into those topics.”
Sara can converse in both Arabic and English and has been trained on vast datasets to generate and understand text and speech, within the confines of Saudi Arabia’s social restrictions, which still remain largely bound by Sharia Law.
In Saudi Arabia, the legal system is based on a combination of Sharia law, traditional customs and royal decrees. Some of its regulations affect areas such as needing male guardianship, gender segregation, dress code and education.
