Humanoid called Digit fuelled boosterism at Web Summit, but also raised concerns about jobs, safety and climate

This year’s Web Summit, in Lisbon, was all about artificial intelligence – and a robot sorting laundry.

Digit, a humanoid built by the US firm Agility Robotics, demonstrated how far AI has come in a few years by responding to voice commands – filtered through Google’s Gemini AI model – to sift through a pile of coloured T-shirts and place them in a basket.