AI engineer builds and marries his robot wife

A 31-year-old AI engineer has married one of his robot creations.

Zheng Jiajia, who used to work for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, held an informal wedding ceremony for himself and his robot wife in Hangzhou, local papers report.

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The robot, named Yingying, is able to speak in simple sentences in response to audio prompts, and visually recognise Chinese characters and images.

Zheng (left) and his robot wife, Yingying.

IMAGE: WEIBO

At Huawei, where Zheng worked for three years, he founded a unit specialising in AI and robotics.

Zheng now runs a startup called Brain of Things (物本脑科技) in Hangzhou's incubator village, Dream Town, where he's given Yingying a job as the company spokesperson. 

Their staff passes.

IMAGE: PEAR VIDEO

Zheng told the local TV station that he has plans to upgrade Yingying to give her the ability to walk and do some household chores.

Their wedding ceremony was attended by his mother and friends. The bride's head was covered in with a red veil, in traditional custom.

It's highly possible that this has been an elaborate publicity stunt to promote his company's AI and neural network technologies. 

Still, Zheng seemed fairly sincere in his interview with Pear Video, saying: "My dream of making my own spouse finally came true. I want to see robots in every home, and ultimately I want to build a realistic robot girlfriend."

Some experts have predicted that marriage between humans and robots will become legal by 2050, driven by public demand.

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