Are they really right around the corner, or are they still decades away?

Continuing our Future of Sex Expert Series, we invited Bjorn Johnsson of Lux Botics to offer his opinion on the question: What is the timeline for realistic humanoid robot companions?

Bjorn Johnsson—Founder, Lux Botics

One of the main challenges in achieving a generic, mass-produced, realistic adult humanoid robot is the fact that most clients want a high degree of customization. 

This customization can range from physical appearance to special functions, making it difficult to create a one-size-fits-all solution. Full-sized humanoid robots are expensive to develop, so the final price tag is similar to a car. At these price levels, it is understandable that the customer will want customizations. 

We have had a customer who wanted 24 sensors distributed in specific locations in the robot’s body. Another customer wanted a realistic heartbeat, both in terms of a physical heartbeat and the sound of a heartbeat. Many of these special wishes cannot be added after a robot is completed, so they must be added while putting the robot together. 

With so many different wishes, it is, therefore, very difficult to pre-manufacture and mass-produce a generic doll and hope that’s what the customer wants. So we have found this is the biggest challenge and therefore we are only getting orders on one-off fully customized robots.

While we already produce custom-made (one-off, 1-1 customer) adult humanoid robots, the timeline for a mass-produced generic, realistic adult humanoid robot companion remains uncertain; we are confident that continued production process advancements will bring us closer to this goal.

Image Sources: Lux Botics

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Hoping for the best—while still considering the worst

Presenting the newest in our long-running Future of Sex Expert Series; for this installment, we invited a world-renowned author and a highly respected activist to give their opinions on the question: “What might the queer community look like in 2035?”

Felice Picano—Whose Classic Memoir, Ambidextrous, Is Back In Print

What I see is Millennials and other young people who will be older people in 2035 interacting about 90% of their time with the phone screens. They don’t see other people, except as annoyances to their screen images. 

They don’t see their surroundings as anything even as real as landscape, merely a bunch of steps to walk through while on their screens. I’m not sure how they even perceive other people close up—if at all. 

Therefore there won’t be dating, won’t be romance, won’t be sex, won’t be marriage, won’t be families with children—they all interfere with screen time.

That being so, my prediction is that Sex in 2035 will be pretty much as it has always been with those above a certain age. And with those below that line it will be entirely electronic—screen to screen.

That being the case, the recently predicted population peak will be reached around 2090 and little by little human beings will disappear from the earth.

JD Terrapin—Mentor, Peer, Parent, And Hope Sharer

I look at my body, a shell, an encasement of soul. The year 2035 and my age is half a century. The war on gender and expression has peaked and made advancements such as the first trans woman having a live birth just a few years before seem like wistful dreams. 

The men were enraged when a person assumed female at birth won the Olympics as a gentleman wrestler. Where in all these miracles did we forget to advance the social realms? 

A man is a man but only if he can prove it? A woman is a woman only if she gives up her autonomy by virtue of birthing anatomy?  

It’s 2035 and there is still no room for them like me.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

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Carleton University Associate Professor discusses the legality and ethics of artificial companions

Furthering the goal of our Future of Sex Expert Series to offer you a range of professional insights on the current and future state of sexual technology, we asked Associate Professor Lara Karaian of Carleton University’s Institute of Criminology & Criminal Justice to offer her thoughts on sexbots and establishments offering access to them.

Q: What are the current laws regarding sexbots and sexbot brothels—and how are they being enforced?

“(Note: I am not a lawyer and none of this should be taken as legal advice! This information is based on my current knowledge of the legal context.)

“In North America, adult looking sexbots purchased for private use are not regulated by any specific laws. Childlike sex dolls have been criminalized under child pornography laws so these laws would likely extend to childlike robots as well, assuming that they were anatomically correct and/or it was known that they were being used for sexual purposes. If robots become sentient, or are viewed as non-human persons, like corporations or some animals, then our legal relationship to sexbots will change, but that’s not our current context. 

“Despite numerous “sex robot brothel” controversies within Asia, Europe, and North America over the past two decades, there currently are no “sexbot brothel” specific laws. It’s important to note, that so called “sex robot brothels” are typically private residences or public commercial venues that rent realistic looking synthetic sex dolls by the hour. They often provide a private room, a synthetic doll, as well as some form of online or virtual porn and/or access to other sex toys. To date, despite being advertised as sex robot establishments, possibly to animate their products and intensify the allure of their services, none of these so-called sexbots brothels provide access to AI enabled sexbots. Yet.

“Depending on the country and jurisdiction, the “sex robot brothels” have faced the threat of criminalization via existing prostitution laws. In Canada, where many of the doll brothel controversies occurred, commercial sexual services are primarily regulated by the federal government and the Canadian Criminal Code. At the same time, local sex industries—such as sex toy stores, strip clubs, steam baths, massage/body rub parlors, and escort services—are also controlled via municipal zoning bylaws and licensing schemes. 

“Unlike federal prostitution laws, municipalities cannot outright prohibit certain sexual acts or personal relationships. Nevertheless, municipalities regulate myriad sex-related brothel-like businesses in so far as both city workers and the businesses themselves remain willfully ignorant of the provision of sexual services on the premises. 

“In the North American legal context, sexual entertainment establishments are controlled via a laddered approach, ranging from the regulation of XXX toy stores to those with higher intimacy and the presence of other humans, such as strip clubs, bathhouses, and body rub parlors. While municipalities are tasked with ensuring community health and safety, and are not meant to police morality, in reality they often restrict the number of sexual entertainment establishments via caps, zoning restrictions and licensing requirements that result in the denial or subsequent closure of emerging sextech rental services. 

“Internationally, there have been some calls to apply prostitution laws to sexbots brothels, however in all the cases I am aware of these laws were deemed inapplicable since no human sex workers were involved. Nevertheless, in those jurisdictions where some aspect of sex work is criminalized, sexbot brothels have faced much community and political backlash. As a result, they’ve faced more municipal regulation.”

Q: What legislation would be beneficial towards a positive usage of sexbots and/or sexbot brothels?

“As of 2024, almost all the sex doll/sexbot brothels that opened across North America, Asia, and Europe closed soon after opening. Municipal regulation is a big part of this, but not all the reasons for these closures are known. In addition to legal barriers, sex work and sex tech stigma play some role. 

Of the many doll brothels that have emerged over the past two decades only two remain in operation that I am aware of: Berlin’s Cybrothel (“Cybrothel,” n.d.), and Prague’s Naughty Harbor Sex Doll Brothel (“Naughty Harbor Sex Doll Brothel,” n.d.). Both exist in jurisdictions with full or partial legalization of sex work. 

“Legislators need to be clear on the differences between sexbots and human sex workers, but they also must be careful not to conflate sex dolls, sex robots, sex work, and sex trafficking victims. Sex dolls are not the same thing as AI enhanced sex robots, neither dolls nor robots are the same as human sex workers, and human sex workers are not the same as victims of sexual trafficking. 

“Too often, legislators as well as anti-sex work and anti-sex robot activists blur the lines between these categories to make the case for sex workers, sexbots, and sexbot brothels’ criminalization or closure. 

“Because of the popular associations between sex work and sex dolls or robots, the federal decriminalization of sex work would go a long way to destigmatizing sexbots and brothels. Additionally, revised zoning and municipal laws are needed. 

“But, before these legislative changes can happen we will need more public awareness about the social and cultural role of sexual businesses in our daily lives and communities. In North America, the ongoing legacy of Victorian moral reformers and anti-sex work feminists means that commercial sex and tech facilitated sex is still considered non-normative, deviant, immoral, and criminal. Sexuality scholarship, however, has helped to de-exceptionalize sex, meaning to question and counter the claim that sex and sexual diversity is inherently dangerous and lacking in social value. 

With the development of sextech, we need to extend our ideas about sexual diversity further so that we don’t privilege what I refer to as “carbonsexuality”—the privileging of organic over synthetic sex and love—and instead embrace the difference and benignness of technosexuality, digisexuality, or robosexuality.

Q: Should sexbot design and manufacturing be legislated, industry-regulated, or monitored?

“I’ll answer this question by reiterating my point about our need to de-exceptionalize sex and sex tech. All industries are regulated to address health and safety and to ensure that no harm comes to those who use their products, sex bots are no exception to this rule. 

“Sexbots should not be regulated any more or less than other tech facilitated products based on the mere fact that they serve a sexual function. Any regulation of sexbots’ design and manufacturing should be limited to issues of physical health and safety. 

“Concerns about attitudinal harm, or harm to women as a class should not inform industry regulation.  Yes, our sexual desires and attractions are shaped by our society and shape our society, often in concerning ways. We should take representations that are reductive or negative seriously. And at the same time, we know that suppressing expression or speech, or telling people what they should desire or how to desire, is also harmful. Decades worth of research on porn consumption demonstrate that there is no causal link between sexual representations and sexual harm. 

“Currently, most companies are self-regulating by refusing to produce sex dolls and bots that look like children and animals. There’s a great deal of debate about the purported benefits and harms of these more controversial representations.

Q: What do you envision for the future of sexbots – how do you think this could evolve?

“The sexbot will undoubtedly change over time and, in my opinion, in positive ways. I see the sexbots as benign variation and as providing opportunities for sexual play, exploration, and identity development, not as a replacement for carbonsexuality, at least for many people. 

“At first, the sexbots will reflect our potentially limited imaginations, but as they become more and more mainstream and accessible, I expect their form and function to change. It’s possible that they will maintain a human form or that they will gradually become less human-like. As is currently the case, they will continue to function as a sexual aid and or as a companion that helps meet our varied emotional needs. 

“Depending on how quickly we achieve artificial general intelligence, they will become new legal persons with whom we will need to negotiate sexual relations. As their form changes, they will allow us to further expand our ideas about sex, the self, the human, and what we mean by life and love.”

Image Sources: Depositphotos, Lara Karaian

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How we may live to see human sexuality utterly transformed

For the newest installment in our ongoing Future of Sex Expert Series, we asked three exceptionally skilled and professionally respected sex therapists, researchers, and sexologists to offer their opinions on the question, “In what surprising new ways might human sexuality evolve in the coming years?”

Dr. Amy Marsh—clinical sexologist, AASECT-certified sexuality counselor, certified hypnotist and hypnosis instructor 

“Human beings can and do eroticize anything and everything, and as long as things are adult and consensual, there should be no problem. Period. What’s needed is not so much an evolution in human sexuality—because the bandwidth of human sexual behavior (and gender identities and expression) is already so very broad and has been for eons—but a worldwide understanding and acceptance of its breadth and depth, as well as a greater social and cultural understanding and emphasis on the importance of pleasure in sexual health and general wellbeing. 

“I want to see movements resulting in a near-utopian sea change in our attitudes toward sexuality (including asexuality). I’d like to see education, social structures, policies, media, and more, reflect this understanding and for sexual and gender human rights to take center stage. 

“This can include tech innovations, like AI and robot companions that should become available for all who need them, as well as greater acceptance of what we call sexual and gender minorities and outliers. 

“We need adjustments to our attitudes toward aging and disabled sexuality. We need an end to shame and guilt. We need an end to moral panics. We need a solid commitment to never, ever criminalize or prevent personal autonomy in health care decisions ever again.”

Gloria Brame—Ph.D. sex therapist, board-certified sexologist

“The future will bring increasing normalization of creative and once-marginalized sex. Formerly forbidden dialogues are now acceptable, particularly among younger people. Overall, people under 40 are far less judgmental than previous generations about other peoples’ interests and orientations. This includes but isn’t limited to anal sex, kinks, fetishes, LGBTQ sex, polyamory, sex work, and porn. Today, hundreds of millions of people began viewing porn as adolescents and continue to enjoy it in adulthood. In my therapy practice, shame-centered dysfunctions have been declining. Instead, there is a thirst for learning how to have more and better sex.  People under 40 are inclined to embrace creative paths to greater sexual fulfillment. 

“They read sex studies, watch porn, and fill in the gaps in their sex education by keeping up to date on how to navigate consensual relationships and stay healthy. Adult entertainment industries—from porn providers to shopping platforms that sell an almost unfathomable range of sex toys and gear—are booming. Offline, the medical establishment is busily offering new treatments for sex-related problems and encouraging doctors to talk about sex to patients. The ubiquity of sex-positive education online and on campuses has also played a key role in normalizing once-taboo subjects. This is a remarkable departure from previous generations who lacked access to sex-positive information and, thus, adhered to ideological models of how sex was supposed to work. 

“So the Internet has been a driving force in culture’s sexual evolution. And, as long as the Internet continues to provide such content, we should expect to see new generations who are free of the inhibitions and sexual neuroses that haunted previous generations.  That said, corporations and politicians alike keep fighting back against these advances. The worst-case scenario for the future of sex is that censorship could bring that evolution to a stop. History clearly shows that humanity cycles through periods of sexual freedom followed by periods of repression and criminalization of sex.  The overturn of Roe v. Wade is a glaring example of how swiftly a small handful of anti-sex actors destroyed reproductive rights in the U.S. As much as has been achieved in the last 30 years, we must remain prepared to fight the institutions that want to turn the clock back on other sex and gender-related human rights.”

Markie L. C. Twist—Ph.D., LMFT, LMHC, CSE-S, RegCOSRT

“I think as technology grows and changes our relationships with it and each other will continue to grow and change and that includes sexually and intimately. I think as more dating and chat-based apps, intentionally include more options with machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with folx intentionally in ways that approximate chatting with human/organic partners, I think we will see more people feeling digiattachment connections and relationships with technology/synthetics. I think as sex/companion dolls and robots continue to advance, and also as older models decrease in price, I think we may learn of more people having these kinds of organic-synthetic relationships. 

“Summed up, all of this basically indicates an ongoing rise in digisexuality, particularly as people are reportedly more lonely, we have an aging Boomer generation, and younger generations are delaying first time in real life human-human sexual encounters, having fewer human sexual partners on average, and also remaining single from human partners more often and longer than in previous generations. I do also think we remain a very long way off from a synthetic partner, whether an it’s AI chat one or robot-based one, being sentient and thus actually being in a mutually consensual and loving relationship with us, but I do think we are in a space where more organics/humans can, do, and will feel deeper attachment bonding and affection for synthetics/technology in the near future.”

Image Sources: Depositphotos

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