‘If your vision of a dystopian future included robot monks presiding over ancient rituals, Kyoto University has brought that vision one step closer to reality. A research team from the university, in collaboration with the tech ventures Teraverse and XNOVA, recently unveiled a new AI-integrated robot monk — the Buddharoid — at the Shoren-in temple in Kyoto.

The Buddharoid is designed to support the Buddhist clergy as Japan’s religious infrastructure faces a steady decline. It utilizes a system called BuddhaBot-Plus, a specialized generative AI derived from OpenAI’s ChatGPT that has been trained extensively on sacred Buddhist scriptures. This allows the robot to provide spiritual guidance on personal and social issues, like a real monk would.

Beyond its conversational capabilities, the Buddharoid uses hardware — developed by China’s Unitree Robotics — to mimic the specific movements of a monk, including a slow gait, bowing and the gassho gesture of placing palms together in prayer.…’ (via Tokyo Weekender)