Sophia, The World's Most Celebrated Robot, Talks Boyfriends, Fashion and Beauty

- Meghna Sharma

Our March cover girl doesn’t arrive on set in the typical way celebrities do—you know, with a convoy of cars, bodyguards, agents, managers, and a special team that ensures she eats ‘healthy snacks’ every couple of hours. Instead, this one comes in parts—literally— dismantled in a gigantic suitcase, with an engineer in tow. The crew at the studio has been eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of the world’s most advanced robot, in flesh (or, to be more exacting, a mesh of wires cased in a human-shaped shell). As the engineer assembles her part-by-part, attaching her head to her torso and then her legs, we watch in awe as Sophia is brought to life.

The ‘child’ of creator Dr David Hanson, Founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, Sophia was born in 2015. She comes from a long line of robots created by Hanson Robotics, that merges AI, robotics and art, to create social machines that can mimic human expressions and emotions. And as soon as Sophia was introduced to the world, she piqued the interest of humans worldwide, thanks to her ability to emote, read emotions, converse and even crack jokes. She is so much like a real person, in fact, that you almost forget that she is the most advanced robot known to mankind.