Engineered Arts, the British company behind the humanoid robot Ameca, introduced Azi as its new desktop robot in October 2024 with a video of the two robots talking. Their eyes, lips, and necks move as each robot speaks and listens, so the exchange reads like a real conversation.
In the clip, Azi wakes Ameca with the promise of a gift that turns out to be a joke, and Ameca’s face shows that it is not amused. The video caption, reproduced by IEEE Spectrum, presents the exchange as a demonstration of the robots’ wide range of facial expressions. The caption does not say whether the lines were generated live or written in advance.
How Ameca and Azi move their faces
Each desktop robot has 32 actuators (small motors that each move one part of the robot), according to the same IEEE Spectrum caption. The same caption says 27 of them control the face and 5 turn the neck. With that many motors in a small head, the robots can combine eye, lip, and neck movements into cues such as a frown or a downcast look.
Update (2025): the Engineered Arts product page for its Ami and Azi desktop heads describes 32 high precision aerospace grade servo motors. A servo motor is a motor that turns to an exact position on command, which is what smooth facial movement needs.
The AI that lets Ameca and Azi talk
For speech, the robots use large language models, AI systems that build an answer by predicting the next words from patterns learned on huge amounts of text. The same IEEE Spectrum caption reported GPT-4o support, an OpenAI model, for the desktop robots.
Update (2025): according to the same Engineered Arts product page, OpenAI’s latest models are supported out of the box. According to the same page, customers can also plug in their own models and code through the company’s Tritium 3 software platform and an open API (a documented way for other programs to control the robot).
Who can use Azi
Update (2025): the same Engineered Arts page states that its expressive robots are not yet consumer products and are available to businesses for qualified uses. The page lists visitor interaction and entertainment, research lab use, and some selected commercial applications. It also names human-robot interaction research (the study of how people and machines communicate) and front of house roles such as reception.
Update (2026): Engineered Arts released a third-generation Azi Desktop on 22 June 2026. The same page lists 32 degrees of freedom (separate motions), with 5 in the neck and 27 for the eyes, lips, and other facial features. According to the same page, the new Azi weighs 8.5 kg, speaks more than 70 languages, connects to several outside AI providers, and can be bought or rented.
Related on Gromeus
For other robots built for close contact with people, see how Hugging Face’s open-source Reachy 2 handles objects and conversation, and why humanoid robot bodies still lag far behind the AI that drives them.
Sources and related information
IEEE Spectrum – Video Friday: Robot dog on a ladder, robot birds, and more – 2024
This weekly robot video roundup, dated 4 October 2024, introduces Azi and reproduces the Engineered Arts caption. It is the source for the 32 actuators (27 for the face, 5 for the neck) and the GPT-4o support.
Engineered Arts – Ameca and Azi having a chat – 2024
The original video on the Engineered Arts YouTube channel shows the full exchange embedded at the top of this article.
Engineered Arts – Ami and Azi Desktop – 2025
Archived copy, captured in September 2025, of the former product page for the desktop heads, which is no longer online. It is the source for the servo motors, the out-of-the-box OpenAI support, the Tritium 3 platform, and the business-only availability.
Engineered Arts – Azi Desktop – 2026
The current product page for the third-generation Azi Desktop gives the 22 June 2026 release date, the 32 degrees of freedom, the weight, the languages, and the buy or rent options.