Technologies

‘You have to distance yourself from it being a human’: Meeting Ameca the humanoid

Yea, though I walk through the uncanny valley, I will fear no evil.

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon.

There’s something distinctly unsettling about planning your first meeting with a robot.

At CES 2022, I had the chance to interview Ameca the robot during a one-on-one demonstration with its creators. I wanted to know if this humanoid was actually real. I wanted to see if its facial expressions were as realistic (and haunting) as they were in the videos I’d seen online. But mostly I wanted to know how the robot would respond to my questions. Should I prep a Voight-Kampff test, just to be sure?

It turns out I needn’t have worried about feeling disturbed by Ameca’s spoken responses. They were no more troublesome than what I get from Alexa. But the face Ameca made when its creator tried to poke it in the face? That will stay with me for a long time.

If you’re on the internet, you’ve probably seen Ameca. The gray-faced, humanoid robot blinked its way into the public consciousness in late 2021 when a video of its facial expressions went viral on social media. Elon Musk responded to the video with one word, «Yikes.» Chrissy Teigen retweeted it to her 13 million followers with four words: «absolutely. the fuck. not.»

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But while Ameca had some people running for the hills, its creators at UK company Engineered Arts were delighted.

«We were incredibly surprised,» says Morgan Roe, Engineered Arts’ director of operations. «Overnight, it became a sensation. We got 24 million views on one Twitter post.»

Roe puts it down to Ameca’s not-quite-robot, not-quite-human appearance. Its body is all metal and plastic, its face is a deliberately genderless and nonhuman gray. It has 17 individual motors inside its head controlling its movements and expressions. But its facial features are surprisingly vivid and emotive. And it’s this combination of artificial and lifelike that Roe says speaks to our collective vision of what humanoid robots will look like in the future.

«We’ve all seen it in the movies, we’ve all seen iRobot and A.I. Artificial Intelligence,» he says. «And suddenly, that’s real.»

Roe is speaking to me via Zoom from the show floor of CES, where Ameca is being shown to crowds, in the latex flesh, for the first time. Even though I’m seeing Roe and his robot over a Zoom call, it’s hard to shake just how real Ameca looks. I find myself distracted. I’m no longer speaking to the very friendly human Englishman I’m supposed to be interviewing. My eyes are straying over to Ameca’s face to see how it’s responding to our conversation. A furrowed eyebrow ridge, the twitch of a smile. Ameca isn’t human, and yet…

This isn’t the first hauntingly humanoid robot Engineered Arts has released. For the past four years, the company has been creating a line of lifelike Mesmer robots and showing them to conferencegoers on crowded show floors.

«Each Mesmer robot is designed and built from 3D in-house scans of real people, allowing us to imitate human bone structure, skin texture and expressions convincingly,» the Engineered Arts website tells prospective clients. «Mesmer is designed to be modular, so you can remove the head with one click and no tools, and swap it for another.»

Princess Mombi, eat your heart out.

Ameca isn’t destined for the conference circuit. It doesn’t run and jump like the robots created by Boston Dynamics, and it’s not something you can preorder now as a household helper. Roe says it’ll be at least 10 years before a robot like Ameca is «walking amongst us» as a service robot. Sure, Walking Among Us sounds like the title of the documentary that’ll eventually chronicle the decline of humanity, but we’ve got another decade before we need to worry about that.

Ameca also doesn’t have Mesmer’s flesh-colored skin tones. In place of the lifelike human hair on Mesmer’s head, Ameca has a translucent plastic skull. We see the robot’s joints and parts. Ameca is still undoubtedly «other,» and that’s deliberate.

«What we found was, when you try and make it look ultra lifelike [like] our other Mesmer line, it looks a bit more sinister, because it’s right in the uncanny valley,» Roe says. «But when we created Ameca, we pulled it backwards out of the uncanny valley.»

Of course, as Roe is saying these things to me over our Zoom call, Ameca is responding. Raising its eyebrows at people walking past. Subtly moving its lips (or, more accurately, the actuators around its mouth hole) as though trying to ape the speech of its human creator.

«Because it looks less human…» says Roe, while Ameca smiles into the middle distance.

«Because it’s plastic, because it’s metal…» says Roe, Ameca glancing over at him with a vague smile.

«Because it’s of gray skin, it’s suddenly…» Roe waves his hand near Ameca’s face and the robot leans back, startled.

«Ooh, hello,» says Roe, making eye contact with the humanoid and leaning back in startled unison. He’s lost his train of thought.

«It’s suddenly, uh, less — less scary.»

I’m struck with the urge to ask the question I’ve been thinking all along. The question I’ve wanted to ask since I first saw the video of Ameca in the lab, with its engineer/programmer hunched over a laptop and another identical Ameca moving slowly in the background.

«When you’re in your offices, working late into the night on some extra lines of code, do you ever do a double take or have to check behind you, at the robot, to see if it winked at you?» I ask.

«Actually no,» says Roe. «When you’re working with it day to day, it’s suddenly, definitely a robot. And a lot of the time, you’ll see one of the engineers walking through the workshop, not with a robot, with just the head. And you have to distance yourself from it being a human. Otherwise, then it’s really sinister.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #707

Hints and answers for Connections for May 18, #707.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle is a mix of difficult and easy. The purple category does what most purple categories do, and makes you really break down how you think about the words. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: School days.

Green group hint: About there!

Blue group hint: Sure, let’s go.

Purple group hint: The Scarlett Letter.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tasks for a student.

Green group: Encouraging responses in a guessing game.

Blue group: Up for anything.

Purple group: What «A» might mean.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is tasks for a student. The four answers are assignment, drill, exercise and lesson.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is encouraging responses in a guessing game. The four answers are almost, close, not quite and warm.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is up for anything. The four answers are easy, flexible, game and open.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what «A» might mean. The four answers are area, athletic, excellent and one.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #441

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 441 for May 18.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands will probably be easier if you have some basic knowledge about a certain type of vessel. You don’t really need to have ever been on one, since the answers show up in books and movies all the time. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Riding the wind.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: famed song by Christopher Cross.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DULL, TILE, TILER, SEER, GALE, GALES, HAIL, SAIL, LEEK, GLUE, HALL, TALL, HEAT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you’ve got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

HELM, HULL, KEEL, MAST, STERN, RIGGING, RUDDER, TILLER

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SAILBOAT. To find it, start with the S that’s four letters down on the farthest row to the left, then wind across, up and down.

Technologies

Google I/O 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect

With Android 16 out of the way, Google I/O will certainly be all about AI.

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20 and 21 with Google’s big keynote happening on day 1. We expect Big G to talk about its myriad innovations across its ever-expanding portfolio of products — almost certainly with a huge focus on AI every step of the way. If we collectively cross our fingers, promise to be good and eat all our vegetables then we may even be treated to a sneak peek at upcoming hardware.

Read more: Android 16: Everything Google Announced at the Android Show

Google also hosted a totally separate event that focused solely on Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition saw the wrappers come off Android 16, with insights into the new Material 3 Expressive interface, updates to security and a focus on Gemini and how it’ll work on a variety of other devices.

By breaking out Android news into its own virtual event, Google frees itself to spend more time during the I/O keynote to talk about Gemini, Deep Mind, Android XR and Project Astra. It’s going to be a jam-packed event, so here’s how you can watch I/O 2025 as it happens and what you can look forward to.

Google I/O: Where to watch

Google I/O proper kicks off with a keynote taking place on May 20, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. BST). It’ll almost certainly be available to stream online on Google’s own YouTube channel, although a holding video is yet to be available. There’s no live link on the I/O website yet, either, though you can use the handy links to add the event to your calendar of choice. Expect links to a livestream to be available closer to the day.

What to expect from Google I/O 2025

Little chat about Android 16: As Google gave Android 16 its own outing already, it’s likely that it won’t be mentioned all that much during I/O. In fact at last year’s event, Android was barely mentioned, while uses of the term «AI» went well over a hundred.

Android XR: Google didn’t talk much about Android XR during the Android show, focusing instead on the purely phone-based updates to the platform. We expected to hear more about the company’s latest foray into mixed-reality headsets in partnership with Samsung and its Project Moohan headset, so it’s possible that this is being saved for I/O proper.

Gemini: With Android being spun out into its own separate event, Google is evidently clearing the way for I/O to focus on everything else the company does. AI will continue to dominate the conversation at I/O, just as it did last year (though hopefully Google can make it more understandable) with updates to many of its AI platforms expected to be announced.

Gemini is expected to receive a variety of update announcements, including more information on its latest 2.5 Pro update which boasts various improvements to its reasoning abilities, and in particular to its helpfulness for coding applications. Expect lots of mentions of Google’s other AI-based products, too, including DeepMind, LearnLM and Project Astra. Let’s just hope Google has figured out how to make this information make any kind of sense.

Beyond AI, Google may talk about updates to its other products including GMail, Chrome and the Play Store, although whether these updates are big enough to be discussed during the keynote rather than as part of the developer-focused sessions following I/O’s opening remains to be seen.