SEX ROBOTS: The future of sex?
Liz Braun
More from Liz Braun
Published:
March 10, 2018
Updated:
March 10, 2018 11:30 PM EDT
One of the sex robots from Synthea Amatus.Synthea Amatus
How would you like to encounter a beautiful woman with a flawless body who is always ready and willing to have sex?
Yes, it’ll cost you, but no — she’s not a prostitute.
She’s a robot.
“She” insofar as a machine has a gender, of course.
The latest wrinkle in plastic companions, the A.I. sex robot is a cut about simple sex dolls by virtue of her ability to make small talk, turn her head and even have an orgasm. Sound like the future, right?
But it’s already here.
For somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000 US you can buy a permanent companion who looks and feels quite lifelike, much like motion capture at the movies seems quite lifelike until you get to the cold dead eyes, of course. But we digress.
Work continues apace on these sex robots all over the world. In America, there were high hopes that a silicone sweetheart named Harmony would be released in time for Christmas last year.
Now, RealDoll/Realbotix honcho and doll creator Matt McMullen — who just happens to have been working on this sort of thing for about 20 years — is launching Harmony’s sister, Solana, a sex robot with an interesting twist: her face comes off.
Much like the Barbie doll of your youth that came with interchangeable heads, Solana can be turned into someone else; her face is held on by magnets, and when you tire of her looks or when her A.I. abilities have alerted her to your faults, you can change her face, voice and personality in one fell swoop. Can’t you, Dr. Frankenstein?
The A.I. head and face from Realbotix attaches to any of their dolls.
Meanwhile, over at Synthea Amatus in Spain, electronic engineer Dr. Sergi Santos would like you to meet Samantha. Samantha can talk, although she sounds like an early school leaver when she does; she can suck on a lollypop, too.
Here’s the thing with these synthetic sisters: they have sensors in the expected places — face, breasts, waist, mouth, vagina — and when you touch them there, they wriggle and moan with desire. Samantha is capable of having an orgasm.
You can read all about Samantha here: syntheaamatus.com
The robot dolls come with life-like vaginas which can be detached and placed in the dishwasher for cleaning. They’re warm to the touch thanks to internal heating. Those ordering dolls can choose from different eye colour, labia looks, wigs, nipple colour, breast size and personality traits, among other things.
Somewhere, Pygmalion is celebrating.
It’s kind of depressing to report that the primary impetus for so-called technosexuals to buy one of these dolls is not sex. It’s loneliness.
And while the reclusive among us can appreciate the need to stay the hell away from other people, it is predominantly men who acquire these dolls.
There are male sex dolls, of course, but they are sold mostly to gay men.
Women do not seem to have the same desire to cohabit with a polyethylene paramour. Go figure.
(For the record, not all sex dolls look like men or women. Some look like animals and others look like inanimate objects. Now you know.)
This photo taken on February 1, 2018 shows a worker painting the face of a silicone doll at a factory of EXDOLL, a firm based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. With China facing a massive gender gap and a greying population, a company wants to hook up lonely men and retirees with a new kind of companion: “Smart” sex dolls that can talk, play music and turn on dishwashers.
The people busy creating cyborg sex partners hope that humans develop real emotional relationships with their dolls.
And why not? The next frontier, according to the scientists, will be human/robot offspring. It’s long been predicted that people will begin to marry their sex dolls (that’s already happening, apparently) and it won’t be too long before children are the result.
Dr. Santos has said that computer software and a 3D printer are just about all he’d need to create children for a robot-human couple.
Dr David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots, claims the progress in stem cell research and artificial chromosomes make it a certainty such babies will be a reality within 100 years.
Guess you can add ‘C3PO’ to the list of popular baby names.
Sex Robots and Society
Q: When are sex dolls illegal?
A: When they look like children.
That may sound obvious to you, but there are two sides to this very complicated issue.
While some claim these dolls promote criminal behaviour, others say the use of such dolls can keep pedophiles from hurting kids.
In the same way, sex robots programmed to resist sexual advances can be useful in keeping potential rapists away from human beings.
There are many considerations when it comes to sexbots: more social isolation and the increased objectification of women, to be sure, but also the positive potential for therapeutic use, for example, by disabled people.
This photo taken on February 1, 2018 shows robots in a lab of a doll factory of EXDOLL, a firm based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. With China facing a massive gender gap and a greying population, a company wants to hook up lonely men and retirees with a new kind of companion: “Smart” sex dolls that can talk, play music and turn on dishwashers.
According to Toronto’s own Dr. Debra Soh, a specialist in sexual neuroscience, we should be looking at all the possible benefits of these robots instead of focussing on the sex angle.
Reached by phone, Soh talked about the importance of companionship, the potential as a relationship aid (“When a couple is mismatched in sex drive,”) and the use of robots by people with atypical sexual interests.
Pedophilia, for example, is not learned behaviour; it’s hard-wired and it can’t be changed.
Says Soh, “There are pedophiles who try not to offend and who don’t want to hurt children, and for these people, to have such a doll would be helpful.”
In this picture taken on Apr.l 21, 2017, 62-year-old Senji Nakajima (L) picnics with his silicone sex doll Saori under cherry blossoms in Yamanashi prefecture. Around 2,000 of the life-like dolls — which cost around 6,000 USD and come with adjustable fingers, removable head and life-like genitals — are sold each year in Japan, according to industry insiders.
The bottom line, says Soh, is that the whole topic of life-like robots is only scary because— as with so many things — it’s still new.
“And when you add sex to the equation, it’s even more frightening.”
But, she adds, there are very real benefits to having a cyborg partner.
And some benefits are fairly basic: “You don’t have to worry about pregnancy or STDs.”
-Liz Braun
[youtube]n6FY4XsLnzc[/youtube][youtube]ltAvOzuRxao[/youtube][youtube]3880Trwl-AE[/youtube]
http://realbotix.com
Intelligent Sex Dolls by Synthea Amatus | Meet Samantha
SEX ROBOTS: The future of sex? | Toronto Sun
Liz Braun
More from Liz Braun
Published:
March 10, 2018
Updated:
March 10, 2018 11:30 PM EDT
One of the sex robots from Synthea Amatus.Synthea Amatus
How would you like to encounter a beautiful woman with a flawless body who is always ready and willing to have sex?
Yes, it’ll cost you, but no — she’s not a prostitute.
She’s a robot.
“She” insofar as a machine has a gender, of course.
The latest wrinkle in plastic companions, the A.I. sex robot is a cut about simple sex dolls by virtue of her ability to make small talk, turn her head and even have an orgasm. Sound like the future, right?
But it’s already here.
For somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10,000 US you can buy a permanent companion who looks and feels quite lifelike, much like motion capture at the movies seems quite lifelike until you get to the cold dead eyes, of course. But we digress.
Work continues apace on these sex robots all over the world. In America, there were high hopes that a silicone sweetheart named Harmony would be released in time for Christmas last year.
Now, RealDoll/Realbotix honcho and doll creator Matt McMullen — who just happens to have been working on this sort of thing for about 20 years — is launching Harmony’s sister, Solana, a sex robot with an interesting twist: her face comes off.
Much like the Barbie doll of your youth that came with interchangeable heads, Solana can be turned into someone else; her face is held on by magnets, and when you tire of her looks or when her A.I. abilities have alerted her to your faults, you can change her face, voice and personality in one fell swoop. Can’t you, Dr. Frankenstein?
The A.I. head and face from Realbotix attaches to any of their dolls.
Meanwhile, over at Synthea Amatus in Spain, electronic engineer Dr. Sergi Santos would like you to meet Samantha. Samantha can talk, although she sounds like an early school leaver when she does; she can suck on a lollypop, too.
Here’s the thing with these synthetic sisters: they have sensors in the expected places — face, breasts, waist, mouth, vagina — and when you touch them there, they wriggle and moan with desire. Samantha is capable of having an orgasm.
You can read all about Samantha here: syntheaamatus.com
The robot dolls come with life-like vaginas which can be detached and placed in the dishwasher for cleaning. They’re warm to the touch thanks to internal heating. Those ordering dolls can choose from different eye colour, labia looks, wigs, nipple colour, breast size and personality traits, among other things.
Somewhere, Pygmalion is celebrating.
It’s kind of depressing to report that the primary impetus for so-called technosexuals to buy one of these dolls is not sex. It’s loneliness.
And while the reclusive among us can appreciate the need to stay the hell away from other people, it is predominantly men who acquire these dolls.
There are male sex dolls, of course, but they are sold mostly to gay men.
Women do not seem to have the same desire to cohabit with a polyethylene paramour. Go figure.
(For the record, not all sex dolls look like men or women. Some look like animals and others look like inanimate objects. Now you know.)
This photo taken on February 1, 2018 shows a worker painting the face of a silicone doll at a factory of EXDOLL, a firm based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. With China facing a massive gender gap and a greying population, a company wants to hook up lonely men and retirees with a new kind of companion: “Smart” sex dolls that can talk, play music and turn on dishwashers.
The people busy creating cyborg sex partners hope that humans develop real emotional relationships with their dolls.
And why not? The next frontier, according to the scientists, will be human/robot offspring. It’s long been predicted that people will begin to marry their sex dolls (that’s already happening, apparently) and it won’t be too long before children are the result.
Dr. Santos has said that computer software and a 3D printer are just about all he’d need to create children for a robot-human couple.
Dr David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots, claims the progress in stem cell research and artificial chromosomes make it a certainty such babies will be a reality within 100 years.
Guess you can add ‘C3PO’ to the list of popular baby names.
Sex Robots and Society
Q: When are sex dolls illegal?
A: When they look like children.
That may sound obvious to you, but there are two sides to this very complicated issue.
While some claim these dolls promote criminal behaviour, others say the use of such dolls can keep pedophiles from hurting kids.
In the same way, sex robots programmed to resist sexual advances can be useful in keeping potential rapists away from human beings.
There are many considerations when it comes to sexbots: more social isolation and the increased objectification of women, to be sure, but also the positive potential for therapeutic use, for example, by disabled people.
This photo taken on February 1, 2018 shows robots in a lab of a doll factory of EXDOLL, a firm based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. With China facing a massive gender gap and a greying population, a company wants to hook up lonely men and retirees with a new kind of companion: “Smart” sex dolls that can talk, play music and turn on dishwashers.
According to Toronto’s own Dr. Debra Soh, a specialist in sexual neuroscience, we should be looking at all the possible benefits of these robots instead of focussing on the sex angle.
Reached by phone, Soh talked about the importance of companionship, the potential as a relationship aid (“When a couple is mismatched in sex drive,”) and the use of robots by people with atypical sexual interests.
Pedophilia, for example, is not learned behaviour; it’s hard-wired and it can’t be changed.
Says Soh, “There are pedophiles who try not to offend and who don’t want to hurt children, and for these people, to have such a doll would be helpful.”
In this picture taken on Apr.l 21, 2017, 62-year-old Senji Nakajima (L) picnics with his silicone sex doll Saori under cherry blossoms in Yamanashi prefecture. Around 2,000 of the life-like dolls — which cost around 6,000 USD and come with adjustable fingers, removable head and life-like genitals — are sold each year in Japan, according to industry insiders.
The bottom line, says Soh, is that the whole topic of life-like robots is only scary because— as with so many things — it’s still new.
“And when you add sex to the equation, it’s even more frightening.”
But, she adds, there are very real benefits to having a cyborg partner.
And some benefits are fairly basic: “You don’t have to worry about pregnancy or STDs.”
-Liz Braun
http://realbotix.com
Intelligent Sex Dolls by Synthea Amatus | Meet Samantha
SEX ROBOTS: The future of sex? | Toronto Sun
