Engineer 'married' robot he built himself after giving up on search for a spouse

While it might feel like artificial intelligence (AI) might have only exploded in the last year or two, there are plenty of people out there who've been pushing for its development for years.

Of course, most of those people are probably researchers or developers, but there are some out there who made lifestyle choices before AI was nearly so widespread - ones that now seem slightly more normal.

A perfect case in point is Zheng Jiajia, a Chinese man who made waves back in 2017 when he built himself a robot spouse after failing to find a human wife.

Zheng was 31 at the time, and after years of being under pressure to get married without any success, he built a fairly rudimentary wife called Yingying.

The story got quite a lot of attention for obvious reasons, but the interesting part is that Yingying wasn't just a simple doll.

This was, in fact, a basic robot with some interesting features, including the ability to see and recognize certain Chinese characters.

If that sounds a little like the major AI models being tested now, which can look at whatever your phone's camera sees, for example, and tell you what it is, then you'd be right.

After all, gadgets like the Rabbit R1 are currently selling themselves on their ability to see the world around them, so it's interesting to note that Zheng built a similar system years ago.

Of course, his software was way simpler, with far fewer input options and only a handful of recognized characters.

It's a reminder that sometimes big developments can come from small sources - although it's hard to get a sense of how Zheng and Yingying are doing now, seven years down the track.

With AI proving itself one boom industry, the world of robots is certainly speeding up, too, with more humanoid robots than ever being showcased at tech conferences and roadshows.

One that has drawn a whole heap of attention in the last few months is Ameca, a humanoid torso with realistic musculature to let it mimic human expressions really impressively.

Yuichiro Chino / Getty

Armed with an AI to let it hold somewhat halting conversations, Ameca has been showcasing its ability to answer queries and respond to prompts, all while making subtle facial adjustments that really are startling in how human they look.

So, if Zheng is still with his robot wife, it would be interesting to know if he's made any upgrades or tweaked its hardware since their apparent marriage back in 2017.

Sadly, Zheng doesn't seem to have spoken publicly about his personal life in a good few years, so we can only hope that he's happy at home with Yingying.