Russian AI robot developers heed Putin's call for domestic tech advancements

Russia is taking its first steps in the AI-powered robot race, and not without stumbling, both literally and figuratively speaking.

Two recent humanoid debuts both amused audiences in the country and beyond for quite the opposite reasons. One was funny as a failure, the other as a relative success.

Putin greeted by Sberbank’s dancing Green

Russian President Vladimir Putin was met by a humanoid developed in his country when he arrived at an event devoted to artificial intelligence (AI).

The forum, held this week in Moscow, gathers scientists, engineers, and industry leaders working to “create the future with AI,” say the organizers, including Sber, Russia’s largest bank.

The robot, which has been built by Sberbank’s engineers, presented itself to the head of state as the first AI humanoid created in the Russian Federation.

The human-like machine was prompted to meet Putin when he arrived at the AI Journey international conference on Wednesday.

Crossing Putin’s path, while he was touring the exhibition of Russian achievements in the field, the anthropomorphic device told the Russian leader:

“My name is Green. I am the first Russian humanoid robot with embedded artificial intelligence. This means that I am not just a program on a screen, but a physical embodiment of technology.”

After showing he understands voice commands and speaks fluent Russian, Green (pronounced and spelled ‘Grin’ in Russian) explained he can also “move smoothly” and “confidently” maintain his balance.

That’s thanks to more than 40 motors and numerous sensors that allow him to “interact safely with people,” the humanoid insisted, while officials prevented Putin from standing too close.

To prove his words were not unfounded, Green ordered a favorite track, bragging about and demonstrating his motor skills with a dance he learned from his creators.

“Very beautiful,” Putin reacted, thanking the robot for the brief performance and granting him permission to return to his stand at the exhibition.

The Kremlin posted a video of the meeting and noted in a press release that the humanoid is part of a range of showcased inventions, which also included a suite of intelligent assistants based on Sber’s large language model (LLM) platform GigaChat and an AI generative model from Yandex called Alice.

Not all went well with Russia’s ‘first’ AI robot

Indeed, Sberbank’s Green looked surprisingly smooth and stable in front of Vladimir Vladimirovich, with the cameras of national television rolling.

And it may be intelligent enough to present itself as Russia’s first AI humanoid, as another recent attempt at breaking the news about the “first Russian AI robot” ended in embarrassment.

The presentation of that one, called “Aidol,” took place in Moscow mere days ago. Videos of the debut showed a much less confident and focused device.

It made only a few insecure steps on the stage and waved to the perplexed audience, late-Yeltsin style, before staggering to one side, stumbling, and then hitting the floor face down.

For anyone who needs no artificial intelligence to know where the word “robot” comes from, Russia does have a lot of hard “work” to do to catch up with the leaders in the genre, namely the United States and China.

And Putin seems to be well aware of that. During his participation in the conference, the president urged Russians to rally behind domestic AI and tech sovereignty, announcing the establishment of a national AI task force, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

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