A tech company is gearing up to launch a new line of human-looking robots, but they want them to have a friendly face.
While Promobot could just make a range of artificial intelligence created faces, they’re looking for actual humans to lend their features for the newest batch of machines.
They are willing to pay £150,000 (USD$200,000/AUD$280,000) to the special someone to hand over the rights to their face.
The company said they are hunting for a ‘kind and friendly’ appearance, but they will be open to applications from people of all races and genders, and you’ll have to be over the age of 25.
Promobot is hoping to launch their robots in hotels, shopping centres and airports in North America and the Middle East from 2023.
“Our company is developing technologies in the field of facial recognition, as well speech, autonomous navigation, artificial intelligence and other areas of robotics,” the company said.
“Since 2019, we have been actively manufacturing and supplying humanoid robots to the market.
“Our new clients want to launch a large-scale project, and as for this, they need to license a new robot appearance to avoid legal delays.”
The winning applicant will first have to take a 3D model of their face and body for the robot’s external features. Then ‘you will have to dictate at least 100 hours of speech material to copy your voice’, which will then be used by the machine to communicate with customers.
After that, the winning applicant will have to ‘sign a license agreement’ that allows ‘the use of your appearance for an unlimited period’.
That’s kind of creepy that they will be able to use your face and voice essentially forever. But when the eventual robot apocalypse comes, wouldn’t it be great that the machines at least look ‘kind and friendly’?
Promobot isn’t the first tech company to offer a huge cash sum for the rights to someone’s face for the use of robotics.
The privately funded firm, who chose to remain anonymous because of the project’s ‘secretive nature’ was giving away £100,000 to someone with a ‘kind and friendly’ face back in 2019.
The firm tapped robotics recruiter Geomiq to find the right face, who said while the opportunity was awesome, giving away the rights to your face for eternity was ‘potentially an extremely big decision’.
The robots were meant to hit the assembly line last year, however it’s not clear how far along the project is.
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