Robots and Artificial Intelligence
It was a robot, "Ameca" (an android created in the UK by Engineered Arts), that raised awareness of the urgency of regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI), when in August 2023 it declared itself "self-aware", claiming to be able to understand its reality, recognise itself and have a specific personality. Whether this was the case or not, it was the starting signal for a process that culminated in the publication on 12 July 2024 of the AI Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 June 2024, better known as the AI Act).
There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence will have a decisive qualitative impact on the robot sector, as it will take them to another dimension, allowing them to stop being mere mechanical devices and become artefacts endowed with intelligence (understood as the greater or lesser capacity to understand, reason and make autonomous decisions), far superior to the mere processing capacity available to computer systems to date.
But that is not the end of the story. In June 2024 it was announced that the Chinese company Ex-Robots is working on projects to improve the facial expressions and emotions of humanoids with the aim of making them closer to humans, which will contribute to greater acceptance by the public when it comes to putting robotic devices in their lives, and could have important uses in education and health.
And this aspect is not trivial, as it has been proven that, if human resistance to the robot's coldness can be overcome, it will be able to develop empathetic behaviour with them, as proven by the "Deus in Machina" experiment carried out in November 2024 in St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne (Switzerland), where, for two months, a technology based on ChatGPT, developed by the Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Sciences, was installed in a confessional where parishioners could converse directly with an AI-driven Jesus.
In this context, there is no doubt that the Chinese and Americans are making the most rapid progress in these technologies, probably because their regulations are much more relaxed than Europe's in terms of experimentation, privacy and data protection. This is why the European Union has been forced to accelerate the development of AI to compete with these superpowers, to which end it approved in May 2025 the "AI Continent Action Plan", which includes an investment of 20 billion euros for the construction of centres to house supercomputers of maximum power.
In this way, robots could have quasi-human qualities, such as the Neo Beta prototype presented in September 2024 by the Californian company 1X, a bipedal humanoid with a soft shell (without plastic or metal to avoid rigidity) with a human appearance and designed to take care of household chores and even look after children. The creators themselves stress the importance of collecting essential information for them to function properly, which is why it will be necessary to adequately control the data they transmit to their manufacturers via the internet, as well as to avoid privacy problems, in a similar way to the way in which mobile phones and computers are regulated.
Robots may even have quasi-human qualities, such as the Neo Beta prototype presented in September 2024 by the Californian company 1X.
And these emerging robot skills bring us to the question of the impact that advanced robotics can have on the labour market. A clear example is the giant Amazon, which in May 2025 admitted that it is already using the "Vulcan" robot, developed with the sense of touch, capable of detecting and manipulating objects, determining the necessary space inside the transport compartment, in logistics centres in Washington and Germany.
Similarly, in June 2025, it was reported that Amazon is collaborating with the Chinese company Unitree Robotics to create humanoid robots capable of delivering orders to users' doorsteps, which could replace the current human delivery drivers. These initiatives are in addition to the famous "Scout" delivery trolleys, which were not as successful as expected and were withdrawn in 2022, as well as the project carried out in 2023 to use drones to deliver small packages in certain locations in the United States, although this has also failed to develop as expected, due to the technical and regulatory difficulties involved.
In the field of transport, major innovations are also predicted, enabling faster and safer journeys thanks to robotic advances and the use of AI, not only in terms of the collective transport of people and goods, but also in individual passenger transport vehicles. In this regard, at the World Expo in Osaka in April 2025, the hyena-like mechanical mount ("Corleo") developed by Kawasaki, capable of adapting to any terrain and circumstance, was on display.
But robots are also making their way into the world of sport. In April 2025, the humanoid Tiangong, developed by the Chinese company Humanoid, was the first robot to complete a half marathon (21 kilometres) in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 42 seconds. And in June 2025, the first football championship between autonomous robots (also Chinese) was held in the Yizhuang Development Zone, with the participation of four teams developed entirely by universities, as a pilot test for the future World Humanoid Robot Games that they intend to organise.
Thus, everything points to the fact that we are at the dawn of AI-controlled robotics, just as happened with motor vehicles in the early 19th century or the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, so that not even the most seasoned pioneers of the time could have suspected the progress that was to follow. And the truth is that it is not easy to venture to what extent robots will be incorporated into our lives; they may even get married, which we talked about in these pages in 2017; have tax and labour rights and obligations, which we also analysed in 2019; or go into politics, as Michihito Matsuda, the robot with AI who almost became mayor of Tama, in the prefecture of Tokyo (Japan), in April 2018, tried to do. Who dares to put gates on the field?
Article written by Javier López, partner at ECIJA Madrid, for Byte Magazine.