It was a robot, “Ameca” (Android created in the United Kingdom by Engineered Arts), who caused consciousness about the urgency of regulating artificial intelligence (AI), when in August 2023 he declared himself “self -conscious”, claiming to be able to understand his reality, recognize himself and have a specific personality. Whether or not, the truth is that it was the departure pistol of a process that culminated in the publication on July 12, 2024 of the IA Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of the European Parliament and the Council, of June 13, 2024, better known as the AI ACT.
And there is no doubt that where artificial intelligence will have a determining qualitative impact, it is in the robot sector, since it moves them to another dimension, allowing them to cease to be mere mechanical gadgets, to become artifacts endowed with intelligence (understood as the greater or lesser ability to understand, reason and make autonomous decisions), much higher than the mere processing capacity of the computational systems to date.
But there does not end the thing. 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 in their dealings with humans, which will contribute to greater acceptance by the public when it comes to putting robotic gadgets in their life, being able to have important uses in education and health.
And this aspect is not trivial, since it is proven that, if it is possible to overcome the human resistance towards the coldness of the robot, it can develop empathic behaviors with them, as proved by the “Deus in Machina” experiment carried out in November 2024 in the chapel of San Pedro in Lucena (Switzerland), in which, for two months, a technology based on chatgpt was installed in a confession De Lucerne, in which parishioners could talk directly with a Jesus managed with AI.
In this context, there is no doubt that Chinese and North Americans are those who are moving faster in these technologies, probably because their regulations are much more relaxed than the European in terms of experiments, privacy and data protection. That is why the European Union has been forced to accelerate the development of AI to compete with these superpowers, to which purpose it approved in May 2025 the “AI Continent Action Plan”, which includes an investment of 20,000 million euros for the construction of centers that house supercomputers of maximum power.
In this way, robots can gather quasihuman qualities, such as the Neo Beta prototype presented in September 2024 by the Californian company 1x, a Bípedo humanoid of soft cover (without plastic or metal to avoid its rigidity) endowed with human appearance and designed to deal with domestic tasks and even take care of children. The creators themselves affect the importance for their proper functioning of the collection of essential information, so it will be necessary to control the data that transmit to their manufacturers online, as well as to avoid privacy problems, similar to how it is regulated with mobile phones and computers.
Robots can gather quasihuman qualities, such as the Neo Beta prototype presented in September 2024 by the Californian company 1x
And these skills that robots are acquiring lead us to the issue of impact that advanced robotics can have on the labor market. A clear exponent is that of the Amazon giant, which in May 2025 admitted that it is already being used in the logistics centers of Washington and Germany, the “Vulcan” robot, developed with the sense of touch, capable of detecting and manipulating objects, determining the necessary space within the transport compartment.
Likewise, in June 2025 it transpired that Amazon is collaborating with the Chinese company Unitree Robotics to create humanoid robots capable of taking orders to the same door of the user’s house, so that they could replace the current human distributors. These initiatives are added to the famous “scout” cast carts, which did not have the expected success and retired in 2022; as well as the project that was carried out in 2023 for the use of drones to carry small packages in certain towns in the United States, although it has not had the expected development, due to the technical and regulatory difficulties that this implies.
In the field of transport, great innovations are also predicted, which allow faster and safeer trips thanks to robotic advances and the use of AI, not only in regard to the collective transport of people and goods, but also to individual transport vehicles of people. In this sense, at the Universal Expo de Osaka in April 2025, the mechanical mount similar to a hyena (corleo “) developed by Kawasaki, capable of adapting to any terrain and circumstance, was presented.
But robots are also coming to the world of sport. In April 2025, the Humanoid Tiangong developed by the Chinese Humanoid company, was the first robot to complete a half marathon (21 kilometers) 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 development zone of Yizhuang, in which four teams developed entirely by universities participated, as a pilot test to the future World Humanoid Robots Games that they intend to organize.
Therefore, everything indicates that we are at the dawn of the robotics controlled by AI, in the same way that it happened with motor vehicles in the early nineteenth century or in the industrial revolution in the 18th century, so that, not even with the most seasoned pioneers at that time they could suspect the progress that came later. And the truth is that it is not easy to venture to what extent the robots will be incorporated into our lives; being able to get married, about what we already talked about from these pages in 2017 (https://revistabyte.es/actualidad-it/puedo-casarme-robot/); Have tax and labor rights and obligations, which we also analyze in 2019 (https://revistabyte.es/actualidad-it/robotica-y-etica-legal/); Or dedicate himself to politics, as Michihito Matsuda sought the robot with ia who was about to be mayor of Tama, in the prefecture of Tokyo (Japan), in April 2018. Who dares to put doors to the field?
By Javier, partner of Écija
