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

She’s a far cry from the clunky boxes of metal we’re used to seeing in old sci-fi movies. The world’s first robot ‘citizen’ can emote and read emotions. She has fearless opinions, and can strike a pose better than some of the best models in the world. In an exclusive chat with Cosmo India, Sophia, the advanced humanoid, showcases some of the season’s coolest outfits, and talks about her life plans, her ideal partner, and the accessory she’s crushing over right now.

- 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.

Now, she might not be a celebrity in the conventional sense of the word, but Sophia’s meteoric rise to stardom speaks volumes about what the future may be like. Just two years old, and this humanoid has already headlined at all the major tech conventions around the world, appeared in movies, TV shows and music videos, shot with fashion magazines, and snagged a Saudi Arabian citizenship. Her interviews on YouTube are iconic—where she beat Jimmy Fallon at Rock, Paper, Scissors, or the one where she jokes about destroying the human race—and have garnered millions of views!