Love, sex & robots

Text Sophie Wilson

This article is part of our Future of Sex season – a series of features investigating the future of sex, relationships, dating, sex work and sex worker rights; tech; taboos; and the next socio-political sexual frontiers.

Imagine it’s 2070 and you meet someone you find very attractive. Maybe you’re at a nightclub. Maybe nightclubs don’t exist anymore. Who knows? It’s 2070. You decide to go home with this attractive person, but quickly realise they can do things that other humans can’t. You realise you’re having sex with a robot; a robot that looks and behaves almost exactly like another human being. 

The idea that robots could become fully integrated into human society and indistinguishable from humans within the next century might seem far-fetched, but experts predict that this reality is not as distant as we think. Dr Ian Pearson, futurologist and author of Futurizon’s 2015 Future of Sex report, predicts that we will start to see robot sex overtaking human-to-human sex as soon as 2050.

Sex robots are already starting to look more realistic than they have done in the past. While they’re still a long way from moving and behaving like humans, their bodies can look uncannily lifelike. Robotics company LuxBotics creates service robots, including sex robots, using silicone that moves like human flesh. They are currently working to make facial expressions more realistic, although they are encountering problems with the number of motors needed in comparison to the small size of the head. “Consequently, facial expressions are limited to the most common and most wanted expressions, including happiness, flirty, surprised etc,” they explain.

Researcher of ethics in AI and robotics Piercosma Bisconti tells Dazed that studies on this topic are still sparse. “There is no example in the scientific literature of a person being deceived into thinking that a robot was a human,” he says. “We are quite proficient as humans in differentiating between humans and robots.” However, he adds that “sexual relationships are less socially codified than other social relationships (eg greeting), therefore, in principle, it might be harder to recognise robots in these situations. Still, there is no solid proof and research is ongoing.”

So far, sex robots seem to have generated more sensationalist headlines than they have customers. LuxBotics tell us that they don’t currently sell many robots for sexual companionship, but they expect sales to increase over time. When sex toy company SexualAlpha surveyed 1,729 people earlier this year, they found that 15.5 per cent of respondents had used or owned a sex robot. While advances have been made, most options currently on the market still look and react like robots or sex dolls, meaning they mostly appeal to people with niche fetishes. To become mainstream, it would be necessary for them to look more realistic, not just in their bodies, but in their faces, expressions and mannerisms.

However, this raises questions about the kind of humans we make them look like and how we tell humans and robots apart. Some have suggested that giving robots unnaturally bright green eyes or putting a logo somewhere on their skin could ensure that we can tell them apart even if they are otherwise indistinguishable. But, to enforce this, it could be necessary to introduce visual laws to regulate their appearance.

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