German police have impounded a humanoid robot and are investigating who, if anyone, was in charge of it when it sexually molested a 16-year-old girl.
A 16-year-old girl was molested and harassed by a humanoid-type robot in the German city of Cologne — which notoriously already has enough of a sex assault problem without introducing Chinese-made robots to the equation — leading police to confiscate the four-foot-tall machine.
The girl was standing outside a burger joint in the German city a little after midnight on Sunday morning when the robot approached her from behind, grabbed her buttocks, and thrusted on her, police said.
The victim alerted police to the attack and officers quickly confiscated the robot, and two cell phones, as evidence. It is said males aged 19 and 16-years-old were controlling the robot and livestreaming it to social media, reports Die Welt.
Part of the police investigation will be to determine whether the robot was under the direct control of one of the boys at the time of the assault or whether it had been operating autonomously, which may influence whether police decide to press ahead with any arrests.
German broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk states whether the robot was under human control or not introduces a novel legal situation, a “legal gray zone”. Their report cited academic Dr Martin Ebers, “resident of the Robotics & AI Law Society (RAILS), Germany, and a Professor of IT Law at the University of Tartu, Estonia”, who said: “If, due to the high degree of autonomy, the consequences of one’s own actions are unpredictable, then current law has a problem. This creates gaps in liability”