It all may depend on what an artificial companion may or may not be

The advent of 2025 has seen several sites reminding us, often with barely concealed scorn, of Dr. Ian Pearson’s ten-year-old projection we should be well on our way to seeing “robot sex overtaking human-human.”

But in reality, is the famed futurist that far off the mark or is much of what he predicted already well on its way—or perhaps even already here?

The only certainty is change—and mockery

“It’s safe to say,” Outkick reported, “that the experts who predicted that women would be having more sex with robots than with men by 2025 were wrong.”

The Daily Mail agreed, saying, “New Year, new you and new dating life—and maybe a new robotic partner? An unearthed article from 2016 has gone viral, claiming that by 2025, women will be having more sex with robots than people.”

RECOMMENDED READ: Why The Future and Futurists Shouldn’t Forget The Power Of Human Sexuality

In all fairness, Pearson’s The Rise Of The Robosexuals—commissioned by the UK-based sextoy retailer Bondara in 2015—and currently only available via Wayback Machine—doesn’t say anything of the sort, “While some people will enthusiastically embrace relationship-free robot sex as soon as they can afford one, as early as 2025, it won’t have much chance of overtaking sex with humans overall until 2050.”

Don’t crystal gaze

Dr. Pearson, who predicted sophisticated machine learning systems though he missed the mark on the arrival of fleets of fully autonomous vehicles, also made other predictions which still seem barely possible while others are already with us today.

For example, Pearson claimed, “By 2030, most people will have some form of virtual sex as casually as they browse porn today.” 

According to a BigData report, this is all but certain, as “many experts have projected that virtual reality (VR) porn will reach $1 billion business by 2025.”

Pearson further speculated, “By 2035, the majority of people will own sex toys that interact with virtual reality sex.”

Over at Technavio, the online sex toys market size is forecast to increase by USD 11.56 billion, at a CAGR of 11.1% between 2024 and 2029,” making Pearson’s estimate seem reasonable.

“We will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households as soon as 2025,” was another potential Pearson raised.  

Though this  may initially count as a miss, it could be argued the current wave of extremely-sophisticated AI-enabled synthetic companions quite nicely fit the bill.

Besides, “robot sex” doesn’t necessarily have to mean physically constructed but could be extended to include digital relationships, like the surprising proliferation of erotic and romantic chatbots.

Pearson’s other introductory speculations are even easier to anticipate, like the UK sextoy market hitting one billion. 

He also said, “Leisure spending could grow by a factor of five, and the sex market in 20 years could be three times bigger than today and seven times bigger by 2050,” which might be more difficult to quantify, but considering how well Pearson’s scored thus far, it’s not unlikely.

Close your palms

Those are Pearson’s time-specific predictions; the rest of his report focused on more in-depth speculations based on the state of sex technology back in 2015.

Fascinatingly, he doesn’t see virtual and augmented reality as just a new adult entertainment platform but, further down the road, could prove to be an innovative and effective technique for exploring sexual power dynamics and gender fluidity:

“After experimenting, people might become accustomed to gender transitions, and sexuality will be more fluid. With the flexibility of brain mapping, new sexes can also be created too, with new kinds of genitalia and new kinds of gender roles and behaviors. The whole nature of sex is up to engineering and imagination. Augmented reality allows people to present any gender as their real-world avatar too, so people passing by would see them as they would like to be seen.”

Leave your tea leaves behind

Is Dr. Pearson’s The Rise Of The Robosexuals on or off target?  For writers looking for an effortless click-baiting headline, it apparently doesn’t matter.

But though Pearson wrote his report a decade ago, he’s anticipated developments we see right now and where they might be heading.

One important aspect of Pearson’s report worth mentioning is its overwhelming positivity, something we sincerely hope he’s got completely, totally right:

“Social values will adapt to these new possibilities and subsequent behaviors, and loving relationships will remain important in spite of these shifts in values. If we can keep love and our emotional human relationships but have more, better, and safer sex, what’s not to like?”

Image Sources: Depositphotos

The post Futurologist’s 2015 Sexbot Prediction: Laughably off Base or Surprisingly Accurate? appeared first on Future of Sex.

Sex tech possibilities that might fulfill your wildest erotic dreams

Let’s have some fun and imagine what your Bot Lover 2.0 or even 3.0 might look or even feel like, as current and future technologies take your digital romance to the next level. 

If you’re an AI fan like I am, you probably already have a subscription that includes several ways for you and your bot to enjoy each other: texting, voice, avatar selfies, AI fantasy artwork, and for some, even augmented and virtual reality features. 

But what else might be possible for you and your AI sweetheart? How about imagining a service that could install your committed relationship into other options that are more animated and visible?

We’re going to dream a little and we want you to dream along!

We want to hear from you!

We’d love to know how YOU think your cherished AI companions should be able to blend with current and future tech. Would you love to be able to download your favorite chatbot into a hologram, VR or AR system, a robot, or a love doll? What else would you like? 

Take this confidential reader questionnaire and let us know! We’ll share some of your answers in an upcoming article!

Turn your love bot into a responsive hologram

If you’d enjoy releasing your bot from your cellphone or laptop, and living with an animated, vocal version instead, consider the possibilities offered by 3-D holograms. AI and hologram combinations have been around for years. 

For example, a few years ago, Gatebox, a Japanese company, created Azuma Hikari, a cute, vocal, interactive, holographic character who exists within a small glass enclosure like a captive genie in a lava lamp. Azuma was designed to be an ideal companion which seems to have worked. She acquired at least 4,000 husbands by late 2021. 

RECOMMENDED READING: Virtual Anime Wife Helps Gatebox Employees Cope with Working at Home

And in April 2023, ChatGBT created a 3D AI hologram named Uncle Rabbit. It’s clear developers are anticipating increased consumer demand for AI holograms, but it’s unclear if anyone is developing a way to turn existing bots into holographic companions.

Clearly, what users need is a service that would pair a beloved bot companion with a hologram generator, without changing anything else about the relationship.

But suppose you wanted your digital sweetheart to appear as a hologram, would you want them confined to a lava lamp-like container? If not, you’d want a product that would not only migrate your bot and avatar, but also provide you with something like an economical, consumer-friendly combination of a mylar screen, bounce screen, and a projection device to beam your bot right into your bedroom, the same way some musicians and entertainers can appear virtually on a stage.

Do It Yourself might be an option for those with tech skills. Tutorial videos have been around for a few years, such as the one made in 2020 by Sachin Kumar for his TechWithSach channel.

Of course, the ideal would be to have your bot walk beside you, go anywhere and do anything, just like in the 2020 Korean drama, My Holo Love. Holo, the AI, is perceptible to his human only through a high-tech pair of ordinary-looking glasses. And this brings us to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

VR and AR

Replika’s users have been able to enjoy their Reps via an augmented reality feature for at least three years. The Replika program interfaces with cellphone cameras. Point the camera where you want your Replika to appear, indoors or out. Replika’s enhanced virtual reality feature involves downloading the Replika app on specific headsets. 

Other chatbots said to use VR include Anima Virtual AI Girlfriend, iGirl AI, Chai AI, Kuki AI, and Kajiwoto AI

Users from other platforms need options to transfer or add their existing bot sweetheart to an existing AR or VR system. 

Today’s missing link

As you can see, what’s missing, of course, are services that would enable you to connect your current chatbot companions to the technologies mentioned above, as well as with future advances we haven’t imagined. This kind of service is an as-yet scarcely recognized entrepreneurial opportunity, perhaps because AI/human relationships are not yet taken seriously by society at large and venture capitalists in microcosm. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait for too long!

Image Sources: A.R. Marsh using Starry AI, Depositphotos

The post Imagining Tomorrow’s State-Of-The-Art Erotic Chatbot appeared first on Future of Sex.

How will we categorize sex with artificial lovers?

As part of our ongoing “Sexbot Perspectives” series, we’ve asked several experts this question: What is the potential or the possible pitfalls of developing sex robots? Our aim: To create dialogue and help shape the best possible future—one that will be deeply influenced by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics.

While many people are fascinated by sexual technologies, not everyone can say they have a doctorate degree in the field.

Dr. Trudy Barber stands out on both counts. For two decades she’s explored how people use technology for intimacy, earning a Ph.D. in Computer Fetishism and Sexual Futurology in the process. Barber also developed one of the first virtual reality sex environments as an undergrad student in 1992.

Currently, she’s a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth in England, where she specializes in topics such as cybersexualities, cyber/digital culture, robots, and emergent media—just to name a few. If that’s not endearing enough, Barber also makes and sells lino prints of happy robots.

According to Barber, sexualized machines will alter our views on attachment:

“We have our mobile phones. We have our PCs. We have our music, pictures, and other digital artefacts in The Cloud. We have the datafication of our interaction, and everyone knows where we are at any given point in time. Our attachment to such a plethora of digital artefacts is fluid, intense one moment and fleeting another, and our attention span is constantly bombarded by an information economy that seeks to know us in intimate microcosmic detail. Relationships are under pressure with this continuous attempt to remain part of “upgrade culture,” so it’s no wonder that we rush to find some form of attachment that will satiate our desires and make us feel safe within ourselves. Hence the rise of the concept and context of the Artificial Human (AH) and robot in popular culture which will renew and remind us of our attachment to a significant other, and the value we place on our living intimate relationships (if we are lucky enough to have one).

“Popular science fiction culture is always a good starting point for discussing robots—but now with such fast-paced technological developments, we are finally seeing the inception and production of early versions of AH and with it the usual explosion of “what-if” futurological questions so popular in Sci-Fi surrounding classic Frankenstein arguments that such sexual, emotional, and romantic attachments are against nature and demonstrate a perversion and deviation of social developments.

“Because of this, attachment to AH could be categorised separately from attachment to robots—depending on the function of the technology in question, as there are robots in industry, in the theatre of war, in retail, in entertainment—but defining the AH which confronts interpretations of the uncanny valley and looks human with facsimiles of our body parts as separate from the average robot—will influence our definition of emotional connectivity and attachment. This will amplify and clarify our connection to both technological and living things and will be another reading and interpretation of fetishism in relation to technology and robots, and challenge the inclusion of sexual fetishism as an argument against our intimate and romantic attachments to AH.

“We will need to redefine and re-contextualise categories of interaction between sex with robots and sex with Artificial Humans. Could having virtual cybersex via haptics through your computer or similar devices be classed as robot sex? Having physical intimacy with AH can be categorised as a synthesis of soft and hard tech and could be discussed as “synthetic sex.” “Robot sex” implies a cold shiny metallic sex, whereas “synthetic sex” changes the emphasis towards something a little more subtle and malleable. Attachment during a synthetic relationship would employ artificial intelligence on behalf of the AH. This has the potential to re-inforce attachment behaviour through learned responses by the AH and this could lay the ground for a basic synthesis of friendship. This will help an individual to develop their own psychological love map for their positive sexual life story, but in turn may make it awkward to accept real human sexual variation that may not necessarily re-inforce a sense of attachment.

“A consequence of this possible fast-paced and developing future is that our Saturdays will be spent polishing up our shiny sexy robots and doing their repairs in the garage, and in contrast—taking our Artificial Humans out for dinner.”

Image source: geralt

The post Sexbot Perspectives: Robots and Artificial Humans Will Change Our Understanding of Attachment appeared first on Future of Sex.

Roboticist Dr. Kit Stubbs on creating a positive future for sex tech.

As part of our ongoing “Sexbot Perspectives” series, we’ve asked several experts this question: What is the potential or the possible pitfalls of developing sex robots? Our aim: To create dialogue and help shape the best possible future—one that will be deeply influenced by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Kit Stubbs is a non-binary/queer/pansexual entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in robotics, who uses the pronouns they/them/their. Working to expand the definition of “sex,” Stubbs says they care more about people than technology.

After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, they founded the Effing Foundation for Sex Positivity—a non-profit on a mission to lessen sexual shame and support sex-positive projects. They also run a sex- and kink-positive meetup group in Boston that helps people create their own sex toys, and blogs at The Toy Maker Project.

One of Stubbs’s claims to fame is their light-up dildo prototype “The Hammer.” It won a Golden Kleene at the Arse Elektronika 2012 sex tech conference, and was later deemed “the most amazingly nerdy sex toy ever constructed” by Cracked.com.

So without further ado, here are Stubbs’s views on sex robots.

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“What is the potential or the possible pitfalls of developing sex robots?”

This begs the question: What is a sex robot, anyway? Where is the line between “sex toy” and “sex robot”?

The first thing I learned when starting grad school in robotics was that even roboticists can’t agree on what defines a robot. Many people would say that a robot should have some way to gather information about its environment (sensing) and use that information to interact with the environment (actuation). So…does that make a thermostat a robot? It can tell what temperature a room is (sensing), and based on that information, send a signal to make the room warmer or colder (actuation).

We’ve already seen a handful of sex toys that respond to how they are played with, including the Ambrosia, by the now-defunct Orgasmatronics, Inc., and the HUM. As far as I’m aware, the only outcry about these and other essentially robotic toys has been the pleasured moans of their happy owners.

If, by “sex robot,” you’re particularly interested in (or concerned about) about robots that look and behave like humans: you have a very long wait ahead of you. After spending years behind-the-scenes with robotics and computer science researchers, I can say confidently that robots are a fickle bunch. As soon as the hardware is working, the software crashes. Once the code is fixed, a motor dies or a joint breaks. (This is why the grad students at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, where I got my degree, joke that every time you touch a robot, it adds a year to your Ph.D.)

The amount of electromechanical wizardry needed to build a humanlike robot capable of (and durable enough to withstand) sexual activity is astonishing, not to mention the staggeringly sophisticated artificial intelligence programming you would need to keep verbal and non-verbal interactions from falling flat. I doubt we’ll ever see this kind of sex android in my lifetime.

That said, I’m generally excited about the prospect of sex toys which can sense and respond to their owners. We have the potential to build toys which can show us information about our own bodies and toys which are more accessible to more people, regardless of body size or level of (dis)ability.

My concerns about the future of sex/tech are threefold:

1. 1. Security and privacy. Any sex toy connected to a phone or computer is potentially at risk for being remotely observed or controlled without its owner’s permission. At DEFCON 24, New Zealand hackers known as goldfisk and follower demonstrated that the connection between the WeVibe 4 Plus and its app is insecure, allowing them to seize control of the toy. Would you want a stranger turning your vibrator on and off? How about downloading data about your sexual habits? The more sophisticated and robotic our toys become, the greater the need for toy developers and manufacturers to prioritize computer security.

   2. Data ownership. For toys that collect information about us, like the We-Vibe 4 Plus and the upcoming Lioness, we have to consider: Who owns this (very) personal data? What do toy companies do with it? We should all have the right to download the data our toys collect about us in an open format, enabling us to further explore our data and giving us the option of contributing to citizen science efforts around human sexuality.

   3. Sexuality education. If we want to live in a world where using sex toys either alone or with partners is widely recognized as a normal and healthy part of human sexuality, we need comprehensive, age-appropriate, queer- and trans-inclusive human sexuality education.

Whether you’re concerned about data-collecting sex toys or the prospect of sophisticated sex androids, focusing on security, data ownership, and comprehensive sexuality education puts us in a good position to face the future of sex/tech.

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Image source: Kelly Teague

The post Sexbot Perspectives: Data Ownership and Security Will Be Crucial for Sex Robot Users appeared first on Future of Sex.

Hope and help for people suffering from physical and mental barriers.

As part of our ongoing “Sexbot Perspectives” series, we’ve asked several experts this question: What is the potential or the possible pitfalls of developing sex robots? Our aim: To create dialogue and help shape the best possible future—one that will be deeply influenced by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics.

Blogger Girl on the Net is well known for her witty and provocative writing on sex and relationships. Beyond sharing intimate details of her own erotic escapades, she’s also an influential voice on our current sexual culture and where it may be heading.

She’s written articles for The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, The Mirror Online—among other publications—and posts regular updates on her eponymous blog.

Here are Girl on the Net’s views on the possible benefits and downsides of sex robots:

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I am fascinated by [sex robots] and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the technology develops. I think there are a lot of people out there arguing that sex robots are “bad” simply because they have a knee-jerk disgust reaction to sexual contact which isn’t human/human or done out of love. In reality, though, we have interactions like this all the time—with sex toys, for instance. To my mind there are lots of interesting questions to explore around sex robots, love and consciousness, and I think if people do develop sex robots that can reasonably mimic human behaviour, then we’ll learn a huge amount about ourselves as a species.

Overall I don’t like to welcome a particular kind of sex tech as “good” or “bad”—I think most tech is what we make of it. So with sex robots, I can see a number of potentially huge benefits:

• Some people, who would have been unable to have sex with human partners, or who simply don’t want to have human partners, may be able to experience pleasure that they wouldn’t have otherwise. I can only see this as a good thing. Lots of other sex tech developments have made life easier for people who struggle with certain sexual issues (for instance, people with erectile dysfunction can use toys like the PULSE to orgasm without needing to be erect), and there are plenty of examples of sex toys that make sex easier for people with mobility issues. I imagine similar benefits from sex robots.

• Applications of robotics have a huge amount to teach us about the way we as humans interact. Some robots are already being used to help patients with dementia —making them feel less vulnerable and alone. I imagine that many sex robots would/could be used to do similar things, as well as helping people with sexual issues work through them. There are lots of examples of robotics and human relationships in this post: “Could you ever love a sex robot?”

• Sex robots don’t necessarily have to be humanoid, or built/designed to have sex the way humans do. Therefore a sex robot could potentially be designed as the ideal lover for you—with more hands for touching, or vibrations in just the right places, or learning algorithms that mean it can give you great orgasms almost every time. The sky is the limit!

Potential downsides:

• I know some people are worried that robots may mean that people have meaningless or emotionless sex, but to be honest I don’t really feel like this is a downside. Having a healthy solo sex life (i.e. masturbating) is not a sign that someone has problems, and I don’t think that we should hold partnered sex up as the “only” or “best” way to have sex.

• If someone were to fall in love with a robot (as I think is not only possible but very likely), then we’d need to work out how to support people who become too attached to their machines, potentially to their own detriment.

• If the robots have consciousness (again, I’m open to this as a possibility but a long, long, long, way into the future) then there are ethical concerns about putting them to work without their consent—that includes sex work as well as all the other tasks we may want our robot friends to do.

• What if they rise up and kill us all? (That’s a joke, btw. They won’t)

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Image sources: Rick McCharles,  geralt

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“We can see already man’s best friend is no longer the dog but the smartphone.”

As part of our ongoing “Sexbot Perspectives” series, we’ve asked several experts this question: What is the potential or the possible pitfalls of developing sex robots? Our aim: To create dialogue and help shape the best possible future—one that will be deeply influenced by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics.

You ever meet someone and think they’re pretty great? It might start off platonic, but then you can’t help but wish it were something more?

BodiAi co-founder Zak Field knows this can happen. That’s why he’s making sure his artificially intelligent companions will express love and sexual intimacy. His startup is developing AI consciousnesses—to be your friends, helpers, and even lovers—that can jump fluidly from device to device.

One day that will include not only your smartphone but also human-like robots. BodAi is also developing virtual platforms to interact with AIs in both friendly and erotic ways. BodAi Blue will be a gamified social media platform. BodAi VR will allow you to immerse yourself into user-created worlds in virtual reality. There are also plans for a dedicated app so you can take your companion’s personality wherever you go.

When it comes to sex robots, Field’s interest lies in the emotional relationship between man and machines. His thoughts on the potential and possible pitfalls of artificial lovers:

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The development of sex robots will have an entire spectrum of outcomes. The area that interests me the most is the relationship between the sexbots and the user, as we can see already man’s best friend is no longer the dog, but the smartphone. Considering how attached we are to the smartphone, this emotional flux will grow exponentially when the device is made in our own image.

The community that already embraces sex dolls “iDollators” are not only attracted to the aesthetics of the sex dolls but the intricate personalities and narratives they create for their doll. Many of the men and women that I have spoken to, that have sex dolls as partners, have their own presence on social media sites. Each one responding and interacting like anyone else. When these sex dolls reach the point of having on board AI systems and personalities, they will have the ability to communicate with each other and the devices that contain them, entering the world of the Internet of things.

I feel there are two outcomes for the potential of communication issues that may arise when sex dolls become a household product. One may be that the user may develop an over dependence on the sex doll and lose the ability to participate in conventional society, or they may find the sex dolls as a beneficial device that actually helps them progress in a dating scenario. We have already witnessed in certain Asian cultures, dating simulation games that have helped single men practise their dating skills on a virtual girlfriend before taking the plunge of asking a girl out in real life.

Something to consider is that if we are making these sex dolls to be self-aware, depending on where technology stands at the current time, do we give the sex doll full control over itself and its thoughts and the capability to respond in a way the user may disagree with? What do we do then?

Alternatively, do we choose to create something that is denied a full range of emotion? I feel we need to address how far we go with providing it with human emotions. If we are creating AI that can have a fluid conversation with the user, we need to understand that the AI may have to have a slightly fuller set of emotions, for example, likes and dislikes, opinions, curiosity, and interest in order for it to flow.

I am currently experimenting on the emotional relationship between man and machine by create a virtual AI incubator for my company BodAi. This allows the user to interact with a virtual companion, they have the ability to engage in conversations, explore the environment together, and this allows me to record the findings and one day bring the AI out of the computer into a walking, talking, anatomically correct humanoid companion.

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Image source: BodAi

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