It doesn’t seem to talk, but its outfit speaks volumes: Pride flags affixed to its elbows, a brown cowboy hat atop its head and and a banner across its chest that appears to bear its name — “Rizzbot.”
There isn’t much more information available about the mysterious android, but it’s made waves online since it began to appear don’t he streets of West Hollywood recently. A quick search on social media sites shows cellphone video of the 4-foot-tall, 70-pound robot doing dance moves, interacting with strangers and even running across Santa Monica Boulevard on a crosswalk.
And many of the clips – reposted by non-descript accounts like “Clown World,” “Yip” and “News Now” – contain the same details about Rizzbot’s origins:
He’s built by Unitree Robotics, based in China; he’s “AI-powered” and uses “deep reinforcement learning and advanced simulation training” to function. The company’s website, unitree.com, is quite dense, with plenty of details about its vast line of robots, ranging in price from a couple of thousand dollars to more than $100,000.
“It doesn’t surprise me, no,” said longtime West Hollywood resident Michael Fiscina, “I expect to see a parade of them in about two years at the Gay Pride parade.”
He pointed out that the city is already populated by robots of a different sort, including Waymo self-driving cars and Coco robotic delivery carts.
“I love it! It’s so West Hollywood!” said Emmik Gonzalez, manager of zpizza on Santa Monica Boulevard. Nicolay Espitia echoed those sentiments.
“It was fun to see him dancing and kind of, like, sharing with people,” he said.
If Unitree was using Rizzbot for publicity about its line of robots, then mission accomplished. Videos of him sporting his gay-friendly outfit have gone viral, although NBC4’s attempts to interview someone from the company were unsuccessful.