Can robots be creative?

British gallery owner Aidan Meller hopes to go some way towards answering that question with Ai-Da, a robot whose makers say will be able to draw people from sight with a pencil in its bionic hand.

Mr Meller is overseeing the final stages of Ai-Da's construction by engineers from British robot maker Engineered Arts, reported Reuters.

Mr Meller calls Ai-Da - named after British mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace - the world's first "AI ultra-realistic robot artist", and his ambition is for it to perform like its human equivalents. "She is going to actually be drawing, and we are hoping to then build technology for her to paint," he added.

Ai-Da will present its inaugural exhibition Unsecured Futures in May at the University of Oxford.