Robot 'not really' his girl, Canadian says

According to Raveena Aulakh of the Toronto Star, Trung Le of Brampton has become an Internet celebrity after his "robot girlfriend" was featured on the websites of two British tabloids. He is reportedly both happy and embarrassed by the publicity.

"She's not really my girlfriend," said Trung Le at his parents' home last night. "Aiko's a robot who can do a lot of things, and hopefully more soon."

Stories in Daily Mail and Sun sites refer to Aiko, the 5-foot-tall robot with a presentable figure, real hair, delicate features and silicone breasts, as her creator's girlfriend.

Trung Lee claims that he has friends, and he does not need to create them. The scandalous stories suggested that the ingenious Trung, who was born in Vietnam and grew up partly in Japan, may have created Aiko because he was too busy to find a real girlfriend. Quite an unlikely story if ever there was one!

Of course Trung has been busy because it took years of planning, calculations and hard work to create the robot.

According to Raveena, Aiko can speak about 13,000 sentences in Japanese and English, do algebra, trig and geometry, and tell the weather in foreign cities, courtesy of Internet links.

She can move her hands, nod her head – even respond indignantly to rough treatment. When Le smacked her, she remonstrated.

Trung Le is now trying to teach her to make tea and coffee, and perform simple household tasks.

He started to assemble Aiko in August of 2007 and was done two months later, except for her hair, which had to come from Japan.

Trung says Aiko cost him about $25,000, leaving him broke and forced to move in with his parents.

The stress and financial insecurity brought a heart attack. Trung has also regretted the reaction of skeptics and hostility in public outings.

Fortunately, his mother is happy with Aiko. "I like having her in the house because she can tell me the weather. She's like a family member now." Almost, but not quite.