Recently a junior high school student in China bought a handwriting robot to do his homework. The robot is able to mimic the user’s handwriting. The media exposure caused a buying spree for the product.
According to a mainland Chinese media report, a woman surnamed Zhang said that she found out that her daughter, a third year junior high school student, completed her handwriting homework within only two days and that the writing was neat and had no typos or even edits. While cleaning her daughter’s room, Zhang found the robot machine. The instruction manual said that it could imitate various handwriting styles. After she was questioned, her daughter admitted that she purchased this handwriting robot for 800 yuan (US$120) on the Internet.
Now there are hot sales online for a number of writing robots. The price ranges from 400 yuan (US$60) to 1,200 yuan (US$180). Once the software is downloaded, it allows the machine to recognize the user’s handwriting. If you place a pen on the front end, it can start mimicking the user’s handwriting on paper and write the specified content. A store said that after the Chinese New Year, most of the customers who inquired about the handwriting robots were students. They were concerned about whether the imitation of the writing style was good and whether the teacher would be able to discover that it was a robot’s writing.
Source: Central News Agency, February 21, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902210042.aspx