Russian startup Promobot is now selling autonomous androids -- and buyers can choose to make the robots look like any person on Earth. "Everyone will now be able to order a robot with any appearance -- for professional or personal use," Aleksei Iuzhakov, Chairman of Promobot's Board of Directors, said in a press release, later encouraging people to "imagine a replica of Michael Jordan selling basketball uniforms and William Shakespeare reading his own texts in a museum." Promobot's Robo-C can't walk, but its neck and torso each have three degrees of freedom of movement, according to the startup's website. Its face has 18 moving parts, which allow the robot to produce 600 micro-expressions, and its AI boasts 100,000 speech modules. "The key moment in development [of Robo-C] is the digitization of personality and the creation of an individual appearance," Promobot co-founder Oleg Kivokurtsev told CNBC.

We may not have to wait much longer before immortality becomes a reality. Swedish scientists believe that artificial intelligence can be harnessed to create'fully conscious copies' of our loved ones after they die, according to Sputnik News. Scientists are looking for volunteers who are willing to offer up their dead relatives for the study. They would use AI to reconstruct the voices of those who've died to allow family members to communicate with their deceased loved ones. Swedish scientists may be working to build'fully conscious copies' of relatives who have died.

Unless you're new to the planet, you know that soon you'll be chatting away with artificially intelligent bots. But the bot revolution will also usher in something strange: It will give us a bot to talk for us, as us. I call it a "me bot." A developer named Irene Chang (a.k.a. Irene Lion) created a "me bot" at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in New York.

Unless you're new to the planet, you know that soon you'll be chatting away with artificially intelligent bots. But the bot revolution will also usher in something strange: It will give us a bot to talk for us, as us. I call it a "me bot." A developer named Irene Chang (a.k.a. Irene Lion) created a "me bot" at the recent TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in New York.

Artificial intelligence is increasing triumphing in the real world, playing the stock market, driving cars, and even beating grandmasters at board games. But computers could soon stretch beyond the everyday to triumph over the most primal of human fears, offering a chance to save our loved ones from death. In just a matter of years it could be possible to upload the mind of someone who has recently died to a computer, immortalising their essence in a robot clone. In future it could be possible transfer the mind of a loved one to a computer, immortalising their essence in a robot clone. Bina48 (pictured) from US research foundation Terasem Movement is one of the prototypes.