Melania Trump walks with humanoid robot at White House

The Figure 03 robot, which is not currently available for direct-to-consumer purchase, works through a vision-language-action AI model.

First lady Melania Trump walked side by side with a sleek, black-and-white faceless figure Wednesday during an education summit she hosted at the White House. Despite its appearance, it wasn’t an otherworldly creature. It was a humanoid AI robot, known as Figure 03.

In videos from the summit, the robot can be seen mechanically strolling next to the first lady, even welcoming all in the room in several different languages and waving its hand.

“Figure 03, thank you for joining me,” the first lady said. “It’s fair to state you are my first American-made humanoid guest in the White House.”

Videos of the first lady walking beside the robot quickly went viral online and accumulated hundreds of thousands of views and comments, but little was said about who made the robot and what it’s used for.

The robot was created by the AI robotics company Figure, one of the top companies in the burgeoning AI sub-industry racing to create lifelike robots. Six months ago, the company posted on LinkedIn that it had surpassed $1 billion in funding, which included investments from Nvidia and LG Technology Ventures. CEO and founder Brett Adcock celebrated in a Wednesday X post that the robot made “history as the first humanoid robot in the White House.”