I was at Home Depot today, of course the item I was looking for (and shown "3 in stock" on their web site) was nowhere to be seen. Normally I just give up and move on, but I wanted this for some work I planned to do today, so I waited to ask somebody. "Mike" was duplicating some keys for a guy who seemed to be making two copies of everything on his key ring. What I noticed, and had not seen before, was that Mike was not doing the old-style trying to find the right blank, aligning the blank and the original in clamps, then guiding the original while the blank was cut. Instead he stuck the original in one slot of a much bigger machine, waited a second or two until a screen told him which blank number to select from a rack on top of the housing. He pulls a blank from the corresponding slot in the rack, scans the bar code, sticks the blank into another slot, and presses "Copy". Ten or fifteen seconds later the screen shows "Finished" and he pulls the copy out, sticks it in another slot which wipes off any debris, pulls it out and gives it a quick swipe with a brass brush.
There was an old style duplicator beside the new one, he said "we don't really use that any more".
So the robots are making keys, not a huge thing but a step on the road to replacing people. However, the robot key copier still needed Mike to stick the keys in the slots, so not totally replaced yet. A bit faster than typical hardware store key copiers and probably more consistent, perfect for places like Home Depot where many (most?) of the people working there don't have a lot of technical or trade experience or training.
And, best of all: when Mike finished the ring of keys he actually looked around for the item I wanted, including going to check in the receiving area, and actually brought it out for me! Probably not going to find a robot to do that.