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

She is a woman with a mission. 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. Suddenly, she is surrounded by security forces. She is not an artist, they say, but a spy sent to find out Egypt's secrets. They seize her by the arms and drag her away. 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 with hours to spare.

But why were the guards so frightened by Ai-Da?

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 for drawing and painting. She is not a human, but 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 in 2019 by a team of programmers and art experts as a "vision of the future". 

Egypt's security forces were instantly suspicious. Could she be listening to the conversations of high profile art enthusiasts? Was she scanning the crowd, watching everyone's movements? 

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

But for security experts around the world, Egypt's demands may not sound so unreasonable. 

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

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

Yet 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, blissfully unaware of her fate. But 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. . "If AI is sentient, then it's definitely included, in my view. If not, then it's not." ln 2017, Saudi Arabia became the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. 

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."

Definitely, say some. 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. 

This is paranoia, say others. Ai-Da is no more powerful than the phones in our pockets. Smartphones today have more computing power than the machine that was aboard the Apollo 11. They too can record and film. For Egypt to be consistent, they would have to seize every piece of technology that entered the airport.