robot-fish-top

Cut the carp and tell us if these are real already!

Japan has created some extremely lifelike robotic-humans before, but considering all of the tiny movements a human has to constantly make to seem natural, it’s still pretty easy to tell if you’re talking to a real person or an android. When it comes to robotic fish, however, making the distinction between real and robotic becomes a lot harder, as Japanese Twitter user @ichinoji recently showed online with their video of robot carp.

Watch it here and see if you can figure out which of the three fish are real:

Trick question – all three of the carp are robotic! Although that was a pretty fishy question, wasn’t it?

These robotic fish were shown off by the “Artificial Intelligence Robot” company AIRO at the recent Tokyo Design Week 2016, an exhibition of all things futuristic and cool, like wallets that used Sony’s digital paper to change patterns in an instant…

…and these upside-down potted plant robots that aren’t as realistic as the carp but are still kind of cute.

Here’s how Japanese netizens reacted to the futuristic fish:

“I can’t tell if they’re real! Or not!”
“The LED lights kind of gives it away I think.”
“I spent forever examining the fish’s movements trying to figure out which was the real one, but it turns out they’re all robots. Amazing!”
“Real carp move around less than these ones, but the movements themselves are very natural.”
“Wait, so are electronics now okay in the water? When did this happen?”

That’s old news, netizen! Robotic fish have been a thing for several years, though not nearly as realistic as these carp. Though for some fish-robots, making them as unrealistic as possible was the exact intention.

Source: Twitter/@ichinoji via My Game News Flash
Top image: Twitter/@ichinoji