If you thought Boston Dynamics' robot dog Spot couldn’t get any creepier, think again. Not only does the four-legged droid have a mechanical gait and the ability to perform tasks like pulling objects and opening doors, but it now has the ability to talk, hear, and see. In a new video, Spot can be seen conversing with its creators in a human-like voice, showcasing different personalities that range from a posh English butler to a teenager who peppers their speech with filler words like “like.”
To achieve this ability, Boston Dynamics transformed Spot into a talking mutt by using a series of plug-in artificial intelligence models, including the viral chatbot ChatGPT. The bot was fed a 3D map of the building it was operating in along with brief descriptions and labels for important locations. Using ChatGPT, Spot can now generate responses by captioning what it sees through its cameras and running that information through a visual-question-answering AI model for context.
However, don’t expect Spot to hear you from far away. The video suggests you’ll have to lean in close due to the robot’s rigidity and its neck’s protruding, vice-like grip. Despite this, the goal of Boston Dynamics was to make the bot more entertaining and nuanced rather than factually accurate. With ChatGPT, Spot’s responses exhibit a heavy dose of sarcasm reminiscent of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Although the video showcases Spot’s conversational abilities, Boston Dynamics explains that the real goal is to enable robots to become better problem solvers. By associating between English words and culture, the bots can answer more convoluted and indirect questions. Boston Dynamics gives an example in the video where Spot was asked to show its parents, and it intelligently walked over to an exhibit of old robot dogs and picked out the earliest model. This demonstrates the bot’s ability to navigate vague or tricky questions that don’t necessarily have a correct answer.
Boston Dynamics believes that this upgrade opens up the possibility of lateral thinking for robots, emphasizing that it does not mean the machines are becoming sentient. Instead, the use of AI enables robots to understand what people say and turn it into useful action. This skill could potentially make them better when interacting and working with people, whether as tools, guides, companions, or entertainers.
As technology continues to advance, the integration of AI into robots like Spot is an exciting development. With this latest upgrade, Spot becomes not only a feat of engineering and robotics but also a glimpse into the future of intelligent machines that can communicate and interact with us in increasingly sophisticated ways.
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