Although it might sound like it’s describing dodgy AI ‘art’, this French phrase has been in use since the 1950s in contexts including policing and marketing.
Why do I need to know portrait robot?
This expression has several meanings but it doesn’t actually mean that a robot has attempted a portrait.
What does it mean?
The French expression portrait-robot, roughly pronounced por-tray roh-boh (listen here), literally translates to “robot portrait”, but its real meaning is somewhat different and it can be used in several different ways.
In the police context, it means a sketch of a suspect based on witness descriptions, what we might call an e-fit image.
Its origins actually come from a game. In 1950, the French inventor Roger Dambron created the “photo-robot game” for children. He cut out specific features (mouth, eyes, nose, etc.) from photographs of 2,000 people in his town, Etaples-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais). The goal was to assemble these pieces, as if building a robot, to recreate the original faces.
Two years later, Dambron entered his game in the Lépine competition (a French invention competition), where he was awarded the bronze medal. The then Paris police chief, Jean Baylot, recognised the potential of his invention and the technique was adopted by the police in 1953, before being renamed the portrait-robot.
In the more figurative sense, this expression can also be used to describe a standard or stereotypical person.
It’s also used in marketing to mean the target persona or customer profile and it can be found in the media to summarise someone quickly based on basic traits, like a ‘sketch’ of someone.
Use it like this
La police a diffusé un portrait-robot du suspect. – The police released the sketch of the suspect.
On peut dresser un portrait-robot des habitudes des consommateurs. – We can build a composite profile of consumer habits.
Voici le portrait-robot du Français moyen. – Here’s the typical profile of the average French person.
