We can well understand that vending machine women do not necessarily instill trust spontaneously: The other day a two-eyed service robot named Eva rolled around us on a confused parabolic path in the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn and wanted to tell something about a refugee boat. Whether one perceives this as a seemingly surreal, technology-loving variety of medial communication of humanitarian catastrophes or celebrates it as a spearhead of educational human-machine interaction, remains a matter of taste. It is undoubtedly reassuring that the emergency button for switching off is clearly visible on Eva's front instead of a navel.
The security authorities in Egypt have apparently looked in vain for one of these in the drawing, painting, sculpture-making and speaking android girl Ai-Da.
Constructed by a British robot company based on the idea of the enterprising gallery owner Aidan Meller from Oxford, the Automate looks like a pretty mannequin with light skin and dark hair.
This wokeness and feminism at the same time mocking, complacent-obedient female appearance of the creative servant devised by a man with partial autonomy could not dispel the alarmist concerns in Egypt.
Exhibitions at the foot of the pyramids
Ai-Da was invited - the name is supposed to allude to the mathematician Ada Lovelace, to Verdi's opera and the English short form for Artificial Intelligence, AI - to present works at an exhibition of contemporary art on the plateau near the pyramids of Giza, which she created with her not at all human looking robotic arms.
These are controlled by a computer system that processes large amounts of image data using self-learning algorithms.
This artificial intelligence has already created abstract paintings and figurative pencil drawings, similar to the robot woman Sophia, the competitor model from Japan - and pushed people from the throne of creativity, which it so impressively climbed in the early advanced cultures.
Afraid of the art spy
Was that why the Egyptians feared the curse of the pharaohs?
Did they shudder at the eerie emanation from the seemingly animate beings?
Or did you want to draw attention to the dangers of unleashed AI?
Not at all.
Rather, the authorities suspected that Ai-Da could be a sophisticated spy device with her camera eyes and built-in modem, and arrested the robot woman for days after she entered the country.
She was only released after efforts by the British Embassy in Cairo.
How nice it would be if representatives of democratic states would always and everywhere stand up for flesh and blood artists wherever artistic freedom is threatened.