British art dealer unveils pioneering robot artist

Billed as “one of the most exciting artists of our time”, Ai-Da differs from generations of past masters in one inescapable way: she is a robot. Ai-Da is the brainchild of Aidan Meller, who claims she is the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid artist, able to draw creatively thanks to in-built artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The 46-year-old art dealer unveiled Ai-Da — dressed in a brown wig and period-style painter’s blouse — in Oxford on Wednesday, ahead of an exhibition of her first works opening next week in the English university city. “She is fully algorithmic… fully creative,” Meller told reporters, standing alongside his creation. “She is not an expensive printer. We do not know what she’s going to do,” he insisted. As he spoke, an occasionally blinking Ai-Da, built with cameras for eyes and a robotic arm to draw with, worked on a sketch of him from behind a desk. Forty-five minutes later, a delicate express