Arnold Schwarzenegger filed a lawsuit against the developer of information and service robots Promobot. The Hollywood actor accused the Russian company of illegally using his image, namely, his face model and the use of voice as one of the options for executing the humanoid Android Robo-C robot.
Promobot produces autonomous service robots that can be customized at the request of the buyer in the form of any person. And it is the image of Schwarzenegger that the company uses as one of the options for participating in exhibitions with its products.
According to Schwarzenegger, he did not give permission to the company to use his appearance. The actor ‘met’ his double in 2019 at an exhibition in St. Petersburg. Schwarzenegger refused to take a photo with a robot, and later asked Promobot to stop using his appearance. In January 2020, Promobot again publicly used a version of the robot in the guise of Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger demands to prohibit such a use of his image, since it harms his reputation, as well as compensation in the amount of $10 million and income from the sale of such a variation of the robot, reimbursement of legal costs.
Startup Promobot was founded in 2015 in Perm (Russia). In 2018, the company concluded an agreement with the Intellitronix distributor for the supply of robots in the United States.