Berlin has become the latest city to host an intriguing exhibit featuring robot dogs with eerily realistic faces of some of the world’s most influential figures. These mechanical pups, sporting the visages of individuals like Elon Musk, the wealthiest man globally, and iconic artist Andy Warhol, have made their home in a German museum for the time being.
Each robotic dog is equipped with a strikingly lifelike silicone head, modeled after modern-day industry titans such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Pablo Picasso. This peculiar pack of cybernetic canines previously trotted through the streets of Miami and San Francisco before arriving at Berlin’s New National Gallery.
In terms of functionality, the dogs’ activities are limited. They meander aimlessly within their enclosure, occasionally producing printed images of their environment, styled uniquely after the celebrity likeness each dog bears.
For example, the Warhol-inspired pup would generate images in the distinctive pop art fashion of the late artist, as interpreted by its AI. This adds a creative twist to their otherwise simple wanderings.
From a functionality standpoint, the dogs do very little besides wander aimlessly around their pen — and defecate printed images of their surroundings in a style associated with whichever celebrity it resembles.
The Warhol mutt, for instance, would pass an image in the late artist’s pop art style as rendered by the robot’s AI.
The interactive “Regular Animals” exhibit was created by American artist Beeple, formally known as Mike Winkelmann.
Beeple said that his project is intended to reflect how tech billionaires and their platforms or algorithms have warped the laymen’s perspective.
“In the past, our view of the world was shaped in part by how artists saw the world,” Beeple said. “How Picasso paintings changed how we saw the world, how Warhol talked about consumerism, pop culture, that changed how he saw things.”
The view of the world today is now shaped by tech billionaires, who possess algorithms that dictate what society sees, Beeple said.
“That’s an immense amount of power that I don’t think we’ve fully understood, especially because when they want to make a change, they don’t need to lobby the U.N.,” he added.
“They don’t need to get something through Congress or the EU, they just wake up and change these algorithms.”
Beeple included a model of his own head on some of the dogs — seeming to recognize his own influence as the third most expensive living artist to sell at auction.
When he debut the exhibit at the Art Basel 2025 event in Miami, he gave away photos excreted by the robots to eager audience members with a certificate that read, “100% organic GMO-free dog sh-t.”
Others prints had QR codes linked to free NFTs.
The robots are set to expire — theoretically “die” — in three years, at which point its existence will be “preserved forever on-chain,” according to Beeple.
With Post wires
