AI image generators have been responsible for so much in the last few months. Barely a day goes by without us discovering some new experiment, whether it's resurrecting late celebs or creating a tool so we can turn anyone into a Pokémon. Now someone's used them to enhance what 30 years ago was the cutting edge in video game graphics. An artist has fed the characters of Sega's nineties fighting game Virtua Fighter through an AI image generator, turning the original 3D polygon graphics into photorealistic images (well, almost). To see how this technology works, take a look at our piece on how to use DALL-E 2 (opens in new tab).

For decades, we have seen people talk to computers in science fiction movies. Michael Knight was assisted by KITT. The computers were smart and personable, and they (usually) did what they were told. When Amazon's Echo hit the market two years ago, this dream came true -- sort of. The Echo was an affordable futuristic device that responded to voice commands.

However, in this case Bob is short for robot. He/she/it comes from one of the companies that are pushing back the boundaries of what robots are capable of. Smart, flexible, easy to instruct/program, capable of working side-by-side with humans -- not to mention cheap. The list describes just some of the areas where robotics is making progress by leaps and bounds. The tempo is such that while Bob might today be a slightly surprising choice, he and his kin could be the natural first choice for your new colleague in factories and enterprises within a few years.