Cairo, Egypt: A world-renowned artist steps off the plane and into the sunshine. 

Her destination? The Great Pyramid, Giza, to take part in the first contemporary exhibition in 4,500 years.

But at the customs hall, the officers do not believe her. She is surrounded by security forces. She is not an artist, they say, but a spy. They seize her. The guards make a shocking demand: to ensure the artist's release, her assistants must remove her eyes. 

Across town, the British embassy flies into action. The ambassador works through the night to save her sight. 

At the last moment, a diplomatic crisis is avoided. Ten days after she was last seen, Ai-DaThe robot is named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace.  is released, eyes intact. On Thursday, she and her sculpture (an enormous three-legged self portrait inspired by the riddle of the sphinx) arrived at the pyramids.

But why were the guards so frightened?

Ai-Da is no ordinary artist. She has a modemA hardware component that allows a computer or other device to connect to the Internet.  instead of a brain, and cameras in her eyes. She is an ultra-realistic robotOne of Ai-Da's early works, the "first self-portrait with no self", was displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.  built as a "vision of the future". 

Egypt's security forces were suspicious. Could she be listening? Was she scanning the crowd, watching everyone? 

"I can't gouge out her eyes," her creator insisted. "They are integral. She would also look weird without them." 

But for security experts, Egypt's demands may not be so unreasonable. 

In February 2020, one futurist warned that rogue states could soon deploy "undercover robot spies" who will blend into the population. Researchers have proved it is possible to hack into robots and send them commands. 

Some say the threat could go further. "Autonomous weaponry is the third revolution in warfare, following gunpowder and nuclear arms," warned AI expert Kai-Fu Lee last month. In the future, robots may be able to attack without any human involvement. 

Others say we should be thinking not about how robots may harm us, but how we might damage them. During her imprisonment, Ai-Da was switched off, unaware of her fate. As robots become more intelligent, should they be given the same rights as humans? 

In 2019, the philosopher Peter Singer questioned whether robots should be included in humans' moral circleIn philosophy, the moral circle is the imaginary boundary we draw around those who we think are worthy of moral consideration. .

Back in Cairo, Aidan Meller is clear: Ai-Da is not a spy. "But the whole situation is ironic, because the goal of Ai-Da was to highlight and warn of the abuse of technological development, and she's being held because she is technology."

Yes. Security is a constant risk in Egypt. Ai-Da has the technological capabilities to film the world around her and record conversations. It would be naive of any country to take the word of a foreign official that a robot is used for conceptual art, not espionage. 

No. Ai-Da is no more powerful than our phones. Smartphones have more computing power than the machine that was aboard the Apollo 11. They can record and film. For Egypt to be consistent, they would have to seize every piece of technology.