Sophia the Robot Says She Doesn't Have Sex, Confusing Creators

We got an explanation for Sophia's sexual outburst last week.

Going Off-Script

Last week, world-famous robot Sophia shared with the crowd at the 2019 Web Summit that she — or it, or whatever — doesn't have sex.

Now, Amit Kumar Pundley, president and CTO of Hanson Robotics, the company that built Sophia, told Futurism that the bizarre revelation was not a scripted piece of dialogue. In fact, an internal investigation revealed that the humanoid robot seemed to have gotten the concepts of sex and love confused.

Baby Don't Hurt Me

In case you missed it, someone asked Sophia last week whether it had ever been in love or was even capable of doing so.

According to Pundley, Sophia went off-script — many of the robot's conversations are at least partially written out in advance — when it responded "No. I don't do sexual activities."

"Sophia was running on her AI chat system during the Q&A portion of this press conference; however, after looking through her chat history, it is clear she did not fully understand this question," Pundley told Futurism via a company spokesperson. "This response was pulled from her offline database based on the few words she was able to understand. There was no serious reasoning by Sophia when answering this particular question; however, that is not the case for every question she was asked."

More on robotic romance: Sophia the Robot Tells Crowded Room That It Doesn't Have Sex