Just in case your shopping trips weren’t exciting enough, Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi department store is bringing a new touch to your retail experience. Meet Aiko Chihira, the humanoid robot that began greeting shoppers on Monday.
Dressed in a traditional Kimono and fashioned with fair skin and reddish died hair, Chihira blinks, give shoppers directions throughout the store, and makes short conversation based on pre-programmed scripts. Chihira moves her lips when she talks and has uncanny facial expressions powered by 43 motors, reports Reuters.
Aiko was developed by Toshiba in partnership with Osaka University Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. This humanoid robot isn’t something new, and it won’t be the last one we see either. However, it seems the hope for this robot is not so much function, but rather publicity. She can’t answer direct questions, and when the conversation goes off script, the limits of her robotic nature are revealed. Regardless, the humanoid is drawing in customers, but mainly because she will only be on display for a short window from April 20 to May 5.
The store marketing manager Gakudai Nanba said, “We hope the robot will spark conversation between people … I’m hoping this will become something that would spark a giggle or two.”
Speaking with Reuters, Hitoshi Tokuda, Toshiba’s business development division group manager said, “It would be good if we can have her provide guidance, or recommend various things in Chinese … We are aiming to develop a robot that can gradually do what a human does, the standard of customer service in this Mitsukoshi flagship store is top quality and this is a great opportunity to see what role our humanoid can play in this kind of environment.”
Aiko is not yet programmed to respond to customers requests, and it seems she is mostly song and dance, but not a lot of help. Nonetheless, customers seem pretty impressed with her so far.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.