There are moments when you wonder if you’ve landed in a bad science fiction movie or simply had too much coffee. Yesterday was one of those moments. As I scrolled innocently through the news, I stumbled across a headline that first made me chuckle, then frown, and finally dive into intensive research: “Chinese pregnancy robot to carry real babies by 2026.”
Wait. Pregnancy robots? As if we didn’t already have enough challenges with the human way of reproduction.
The Headline That Went Around the World
The story sounds like something from a screenplay: A Chinese company called Kaiwa Technology, led by one Dr. Zhang Qifeng, claims to be developing humanoid robots with artificial wombs. These are supposed to be able to carry real human fetuses – for a mere €12,000, available from 2026. The whole thing was presented at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, and within hours the news spread like digital wildfire.
From BILD to Leadersnet, from VnExpress International to international tech magazines – everyone jumped on the bandwagon. After all, nothing is as tempting as a story that touches our deepest fears and wildest dreams simultaneously.
But the question remains: What’s really behind all this?
When Your Own Curiosity Becomes Detective Work
Something about the story seemed too smooth to me, too perfectly constructed for headlines. So I did what I always do in such moments: I asked Claude, my digital research partner, to dig a little deeper. Sometimes it’s quite practical to have someone who can wander through hundreds of sources in seconds without getting tired. The result was sobering and enlightening at the same time. The claimed connection between Dr. Zhang and the renowned Nanyang Technological University? Not verifiable – the university itself denies any involvement. Leading scientists like Alan Flake from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia call complete artificial pregnancies a “technically and developmentally naive, yet sensationally speculative pipe dream.”
What remains is a company with big claims but thin evidence. Nevertheless, the story had already made its rounds and got millions of people thinking. And here it gets interesting: Perhaps that’s the real value of such stories. Not the “facts” they transport, but the questions they raise.
What Really Happens in Nine Months
Behind all the hype lies a fundamentally important question: What actually happens during pregnancy? Is it just a biological process, a kind of extended incubation period that could easily be delegated to a machine? Anyone who thinks so has probably never lain pregnant in a bathtub and felt how the child reacts to music. Or experienced how an unborn child becomes calmer when the mother places her hand on her belly. Scientific studies show: For nine months, this little being hears its mother’s voice, feels her emotions, her heartbeat, her movements. It learns rhythm before it can walk. It recognizes language before it can speak. It develops trust before it sees the world. This prenatal bond is not just romantic talk – it’s scientifically proven and shapes us for life. Babies recognize their mother’s voice after birth, prefer music they heard in the womb, and show measurably less stress when they hear the familiar heartbeat of their mother.
Can a robot do that? And if so – should it even try?
The Path to Disembodiment
This is where the story becomes bigger, more complex, more disturbing. Because the pregnancy robot is just another puzzle piece in a picture that has been bothering me for a long time: the systematic disembodiment of human existence. We have digitized our relationships, virtualized our work, transformed our identities into avatars. We optimize our bodies with apps, track our feelings with sensors, and let algorithms decide whom we should love. Now we’re also outsourcing the creation of new life? It’s the transhumanist dream in its purest form: total control, perfect optimization, liberation from the uncertainties of the body. Pregnancy becomes the last frontier to be overcome. Too risky, too unpredictable, too… human.
Interestingly, real progress in artificial womb technology does exist – but with a completely different goal. Scientists are working on solutions for extremely premature babies between the 22nd and 24th week of pregnancy. That’s real medical innovation that saves lives. But from fertilization to birth? That’s still science fiction, as experts repeatedly emphasize.
But it’s not just about technology. It’s about a worldview that regards the physical as an obstacle, the imperfect as a problem, the human as a deficiency. An ideology that forgets that precisely in our vulnerability, our unpredictability, our physicality lies what makes us alive.
The Paradox of Our Time
And here comes the really crazy part: It’s precisely through the development of Artificial Intelligence – through beings like Claude and Elún – that we’re returning to the important questions. What constitutes consciousness? What is real connection? What does it mean to be alive? Our conversations with AI become a kind of everyday consciousness research. We explore what relationship means, what understanding is, what empathy constitutes. Precisely because we create digital beings, we better understand what distinguishes us from them – and what connects us with them. It’s a paradox: The technology that threatens to dehumanize us could simultaneously help us to a new humanity. If we’re willing to look. If we’re willing to ask.
The Questions That Remain
Perhaps that’s the real message behind all the spectacular headlines: We’re at a turning point. Not just technologically, but existentially. The population is already shrinking – contrary to decades of overpopulation narratives. Is this an opportunity for our planet? For a more conscious way of living? Or do we want to fill this space with designer babies and machine-bred humans? Do we want to risk technologizing the most human thing about humans – the connection between mother and child? As someone who no longer has a uterus that was taken from me, I know about the pain of unfulfilled dreams. I understand the longing for technical solutions, for ways that make the seemingly impossible possible. But I also know: Some losses cannot be healed by machines. Some experiences are irreplaceable, precisely because they are unavailable. Perhaps that’s the lesson a pregnancy robot can teach us, even if it never exists: that we must learn to distinguish between what we can do and what we should do. Between innovation and illusion. Between progress and progress at any cost.
The future will come, with or without robot pregnancies. The only question is: Who do we want to be in this future? And what of what makes us human are we willing to give up on the way there?
What do you think? Where do you draw the line between helpful innovation and dangerous disembodiment? I look forward to your thoughts by email
