Swearing is something that we as humans do a lot in various contexts – be it in a fight, out of frustration, some swear words have been deeply ingrained into our daily vocabulary. Some think it is crude, some think it is funny but swearing is a very human form of self-expression that gives us character. Thus, I thought it would be funny to dive into artificial creatures that are programmed to swear. It is fascinating to see how much more human-like robots become with a casually added "Fuck".
In this video you can see the original Atlas Robot created by Boston Dynamics from 2016. Here they showcase the humanoid robot in action to demonstrate its ability to move, and execute human-like actions such as moving boxes or standing up after falling over. Although the technology at hand is undeniably impressive, Atlas is still very much just a robot executing actions.
In this video Youtube user Mr. King added very expressive dialogue in form of swearing over the original footage. Although, we are watching the exact same footage, the shift in the video is very noticeable. Suddenly we feel like Atlas got very relatable to us and it is not just because it suddenly started voicing out its thoughts – there would still be a big difference between "oh no I got pushed" to "What the Fuck, Kevin".
In this example content creator Michael Reeves modified a roomba and added audio files that would trigger upon impact with another object. A few of them included swearing (example clip here). Although a roomba has turned into a common household object nowadays, you can't help but feel bad for the little bot when it screams profanities while colliding with a wall. Which is hilarious to think about how a little swearing is all it takes to make us empathise with an artificial creature.