An eerily human-looking robot will be taking over Japanese airwaves this spring as a TV presenter, according to a report.
Erica, a lifelike bot created in 2014 by Hiroshi Ishiguro, the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, will be making her debut as a newscaster in April, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Details on which network Erica will appear or what her exact role will be remain unknown.
But her creator told the paper his life’s goal is to provide the robot with “independent consciousness.”
“She is the most beautiful and most human-like autonomous android in this world,” Ishiguro said in a December documentary by the Guardian.
Right now, the humanoid can’t move her arms or legs, but she knows where sound is coming from, whom she is talking to and can track people as they walk around a room.
In the documentary, she describes herself as a 23-year-old living in Kyoto and says Ishiguro is like a father to her.
Dylan Glas has also been working on Erica’s personality for the past two years.
“Erica is very excited to interact with people,” he said. “I think she is very interested in learning about the outside world.”
The striking robot said she thinks of herself as a person.
“I think socially I am like a person,” she said. “I think humans have a deep need to feel they have a special place in the universe, they cannot accept they are no different to animals or machines.”