In China, robotics is becoming so pervasive, it’s influencing real people to act like machines.
A Chinese influencer is becoming well known for the drastic steps she’s taking to transform into a humanoid robot.
Under the persona Daloatian, she’s been posting short-form videos of her robotic transformation for months for millions of followers on Chinese social media. According to the South China Morning Post, she’s spent more than 1 million yuan ($140K) to alter her appearance. The Chinese state media outlet profiled the influencer as she returned to her rural hometown in the southeastern Sichuan province. The 30-year-old stunned local villagers, confused by her robotic movements and appearance. In one viral clip, she broke character when asked about her dating life.
Her real name as 钱冰 (Qián Bīng) in Chinese media profiles. She started posting on Douyin, China’s TikTok equivalent, in April 2018 with a dramatic makeup transformation. By mid-2019, a tutorial on repairing ruined makeup got drew more than 600,000 likes, putting her in the upper echelon of China’s beauty content creation scene. In 2021, she appeared in an Estée Lauder campaign tied to the popular Chinese reality show Sisters Who Make Waves.
Her robotic transformation came after a rough patch. In March 2023, she publicly confirmed she had divorced her husband, who she had married in 2019 after a decade-long relationship. She described her emotional strain and talked about the importance of financial independence. Her output slowed and, by 2024, paused completely as she dealt with health issues.
She re-emerged in the summer of that year with a new mechanical aesthetic. It was an instant success, garnering more than 1.2 million likes on Douyin alone.
Standing about 188 cm (6 feet 2 inches), Daloatian appears as a hyper-realistic near-future android, with human softness and subtle mechanical accents. She wears a silver metallic bodysuit, oversized light blue contact lenses, and a short bob wig. Her virtually unblinking expression and rigid body movements have tricked many online into believing she’s an actual machine.
Daloatian emerged as the global humanoid robotics race was escalating quickly. The previous year, the Chinese government set a national goal to mass produce humanoids by 2025 and to own the market by 2027. An avalanche of funding had spawned a truly staggering number of robotics startups as China increasingly framed robots as a source of national pride.
With support from her agency, OST Media, she released serialized robot-themed skits on social media. She’s become a staple at Chinese AI and fashion events, including the 2024 World Robot Conference in Beijing, where she masqueraded as a robot alongside actual machines by EX Robots.
The marketing strategy sparked debate online. Critics believe presenting humans as robots, even for marketing purposes, is misleading. They argue it creates false impressions about robotic capabilities, affecting investment and research. They question whether the buzz generated justifies deception.
Others argue it was obvious the cosplayers were women in costumes so there no intent to mislead. They see it as performance art or entertainment, where the spectacle, not the tech, is the focus.
In Chongqing, the owner of a hotpot restaurant has gained virality for her ability to mimic robotic movements while serving customers. The professional dancer isn’t going to the same extremes as Daloatian. She performs the robot-like actions as a gimmick to attract and entertain customers.
Her acting is so convincing, many on social media are left believing there’s an actual restaurant run by a lifelike humanoid robot in China.
Fake robots are hardly a new thing.
The Mechanical Turk amazed people in the late 18th century by playing chess against humans. Austrian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen introduced the purported complex machine in 1770 as an automation that played chess.
The discovery of its fakeness came about over time. In the 1820s, when the Turk was still a traveling exhibit, British engineer Robert Willis published a book detailing how it operated. Still, the Mechanical Turk pushed robotics and automation in its own way. It got people excited about machines, motivating inventors to create real robots that could actually play chess and perform complex tasks.
More recently, in 2018, a robot named Boris was shown on Russian TV, appearing to be an advanced humanoid machine. Viewers quickly realized Boris was actually just a man in a costume.
In 2022, Tesla revealed the Optimus prototype as a humanoid robot during an event. However, it was soon revealed the robot on stage was actually a person in a costume. This led to criticism and disappointment, as many had expected an actual functional robot from Tesla, which is actively scaling production of its Optimus robots.
The event highlighted the gap between Tesla’s ambitious claims and the actual technology presented at the time.
In 2023, fake robots confused attendees at an NFL game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Miami Dolphins. They also crashed a San Diego Padres practice session and the Texas Motor Speedway.
The promotional stunt was pulled by the studio behind the science fiction movie The Creator. The movie is set in the year 2055 with humanity at war with artificial intelligence. The robots appeared among the crowd, inspiring awe, confusion, and amusement within the stadium and online.
While today it’s pretty easy to differentiate between a robot and a human, that’s bound to change soon.