Robot assistant irritates German Schlager TV audience
Machine flirted with Maite Kelly on Schlagerbooom stage beside host Florian Silbereisen, viewers ask why producers book robots instead of new artists
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Schlagerbooom: Flirtender Silbereisen-Roboter irritiert Fans
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For the first time in the ten years he has hosted Schlagerbooom, Florian Silbereisen moderated the German Saturday Schlager show with an assistant at his side — and the assistant was a robot. The machine walked toward the host with a somewhat wobbly gait and, asked how it was finding the evening, answered in a distorted voice that it was terribly excited and suffering from stage fright, Blick reports.
Its duties were modest but rehearsed. After Maite Kelly performed, the robot carried an envelope over to her and Silbereisen; when the host asked whether he could have it, the machine replied that for Maite Kelly, naturally, always. Silbereisen called it a charmer. Kelly, who celebrated her Schlager debut exactly ten years ago on Silbereisen's stage, said she likes shy people. Asked whether it was blushing, the robot answered that this was only a system error.
The viewers were less forgiving. On X, the appearance drew mockery and criticism aimed at the production rather than the machine. No one needs this robot and AI nonsense in this show, one user wrote. Why don't they look for new artists instead of robots, asked another. A third wanted to know why Silbereisen didn't simply kick the robot off the stage, since that made it impossible to take robots seriously. Others mocked its walk — as if it were slightly drunk — or reached for cruder material about Kelly and the machine on OnlyFans.
Several users connected the appearance to an incident in Cologne the same week, in which a sixteen-year-old was inappropriately touched by a robot. The machines now annoy people not only in pedestrian zones but in television shows as well, one wrote; another suggested the robot from Cologne was performing community service at the Schlagerbooom.
The format's product is human warmth — the host's charm, the singers' feelings, the audience's affection for both. The production inserted a machine as a novelty, and viewers read it as substitution: camera minutes and a stage slot spent on hardware while unknown singers wait for a booking. The flirtation was scripted; the blush, by the robot's own account, was a bug report.
When the machine told Kelly it was waiting for her, it added that it still had 95 percent battery. Kelly declined, laughing: she needs 100.