Boston Dynamics via YouTube
From the bickering droids in Star Wars, to the robotic companions and NPCs in video games like Fallout 4, talking robots have long been firmly in the realm of science fiction. However, that may have finally changed since the explosion of artificial intelligence in the past year. In fact, we might soon have chattering robo-dogs giving walking tours in a city near you courtesy of the mad scientists at Boston Dynamics.
In a video released Thursday, the company showcased a robotic dog infused with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The bot can be seen speaking in a variety of voices and accents including a debonair British gentleman, a sarcastic and irreverent American named Josh, and a teenage girl who is so, like, over it.
“There’s been a lot of new advances around AI technology—specifically generative AI technologies. Things that are able to write poetry or paint pictures or chat with people,” Matt Klingensmith, principal software engineer for robot autonomy at Boston Dynamics, said in the video. “We were interested in seeing how we could use technologies like these for robotics.”