SexRobot
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The truth about sex robots: Panic, pleasure and a candlelit dinner
Dr. Oz isn't happy about the future of sex. The day I'm scheduled to appear on his show, the television physician and Oprah protege has assembled a cast of victims and villains that includes a college communications major who caught chlamydia from a Tinder date; a 24-year-old woman who was stabbed 21 times by the fiance she met online; and Douglas Hines, a cartoonish engineer donning a white lab coat and outsize bowtie, who claims to have created the world's first sex robot. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
There’s a new sex robot in town: Say hello to Solana
It's been just short of a year since I locked eyes with Harmony, RealDoll's first sex robot, at her home in Southern California. It was an arresting experience that has remained cemented in memory. In that moment, I suddenly understood the uncanny valley, a theory posited by roboticist Masahiro Mori, nearly half a century prior. It attempts to explain the feeling of revulsion and eeriness that human onlookers experience when they encounter an artificial life-form that appears nearly, but not quite human.
Blow-up dolls, vibrators and the sex robot’s uninspired origins
Just a few days before Christmas 2015, I found myself staring down the silicone mouth hole of the "world's first blowjob robot." I'd set out to find the future of sex but quickly realized that: 1) The Autoblow 2+ wasn't a robot at all, and 2) I'd be better off sticking to a grapefruit for simulated fellatio. My encounter with the Autoblow 2+ was both disturbing and fascinating and sparked a 15-month exploration of male sex toys that came to a head in a small sex-robotics R&D lab in Southern California. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
RealDoll's first sex robot took me to the uncanny valley
During my four-hour visit to the birthplace of the RealDoll, the frighteningly life-like full-body sex toy, I've seen mounds of silicone vaginas, sheets of detached nipples, headless women hanging from meat hooks, a 2-foot penis and skulls with removable faces that attach like refrigerator magnets. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts
Ron Jeremy predicts porn's ... present?
When I met porn superstar Ron Jeremy for the first time, he was driving a Saturn Ion and sporting a flip phone. He carried a cassingle for his 1996 rap collaboration "Freak of the Week" and talked excitedly about the 1980s like they were yesterday. Ron was living in the past, but that didn't stop him from predicting the future -- or something. His vision isn't so far off from the one being pushed by futurists, analysts and the media. He sees big-budget porn making a comeback, VR-connected male masturbators and sex robots with holographic faces that allow you to choose your own bedroom adventure. Sex robots haven't completely materialized, but we're well on our way to anatomically correct automatons, and while our sex toys aren't tethered to our VR headsets, we've done that too. Oh, and Ron, didn't you spend more than ten years acting in and producing big-budget adult films? Ron may be a few years late to the party, but a sex robot with an interchangeable holographic face? That we can get behind. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.
We know nothing about the future of sex robots
Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions of explicit sexual acts as well as material some readers may find triggering. Isaac Asimov famously created rules that would prevent robots from harming humans. But at the second International Congress on Love and Sex With Robots earlier this week, any anxiety that may have inspired those guidelines was turned on its head. Panelists discussed the ways in which giving robots personhood and consciousness may revolutionize our lives, but could also be catastrophic. Because, instead of worrying that we will be harmed by our creations, we're now much more concerned about causing harm to them.
The Novint Falcon: Haptic joystick turned futuristic sex toy
I'm standing in the studio at Engadget's San Francisco headquarters, holding the remains of a pulverized, cream-filled doughnut. The pastry's sticky, off-white filling clings to the shaft of a bright pink vibrator, taped to the end of a silver, cone-shaped device with three arms that come together at a point and a horseshoe-shaped base. This disembodied robot boob is the Novint Falcon, a one-time game-changing game controller turned teledildonics legend. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
Robots, VR and the future of male masturbators
In my time as a human with a penis, I've penetrated more inanimate objects than I care to admit. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
Alien sex tapes, robot rape and the evolution of consent
A little over a week ago Engadget's EIC and I had dinner with a couple of friends at a Chinatown Thai restaurant in L.A. As I sipped on a Singha Slurpee, our dinner companions, Claire Evans and Jona Bechtolt of the band Yacht, gave us an off-the-record rundown of a bizarre and twisted plan for the release of their next single, I Wanna Fuck You Till I'm Dead. They'd created a One Night in Paris-style sex tape spoof with a twist: Instead of peeling off their clothes, the couple would peel back their flesh to reveal hypersexualized alien bodies.
A viral VR sex suit and what it says about us
He'd had a terrible morning and an even worse afternoon. Exhausted by human interaction, Roger returned home, eager to slam a beer, throw on his bathrobe and lie back in his big leather recliner while Rhonda gave him one of her signature hand jobs. Unfortunately, Rhonda was programmed to make him dinner that night and, anticipating his mood, readjusted her earlier, more optimistic projections for the day's outcome.
The curious sext lives of chatbots
ELIZA is old enough to be my mother, but that didn't stop me from trying to have sex with her. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.
A first-hand quest for the future of sex
Over the past two months, I've been intimately involved with a series of machines. On a mission to find the future of sex, I've masturbated into a crowdfunded sex sleeve, been transported into a porn star's anus and quite literally fucked myself. On Friday, I reached my final destination. I can now say that it is a clumsy, unremarkable future. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. This is the first in a two-part series exploring the future of sex. To read the conclusion, click here at your own risk.
Sex-robot maker says you probably won't own his machines
David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots and sensual chatbot champion, claims that sex with humanoid companions will be routine by 2050. Self-proclaimed futurologist, Dr. Ian Pearson recently took that declaration one step further in a report created in conjunction with UK sex shop Bondara, saying human-robot sex will start to eclipse old-fashioned human-on-human sex that same year. If all of that wasn't enough to get you hot and bothered about who or what will be handling your genitals in the not-so-distant future, consider the words of futurist Stowe Boyd who posited that sex robots will be a socially derided mainstay just 10 years from now. While the sex robot fantasy has existed for more than a century, the conversation around our future fuck buddies has reached fever pitch of late due to the "Campaign Against Sex Robots," a "movement" covered widely by the mainstream media that takes on Levy's assertion that our robo-sex future is bright. Dr Kathleen Richardson and Erik Billing of De Montfort University claim that these "robots are potentially harmful and will contribute to inequalities in society." We sat down with one of the men working to bring your Stepford fantasies to life at CES 2016. Matt McMullen, founder of RealDoll, says there are far more dangerous AI applications in the works, and believe it or not, he's not looking to create an army of sex bots to replace flesh-and-blood partners. Check out our discussion for more insights from the front lines of the next sexual revolution.
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Dear first-generation sex robot ...
It appears we're on the brink of a robo-sexual revolution. Some have claimed that you'll be, like the selfie, a socially derided mainstay by 2025. Other, more conservative, estimates posit that having sex with you will be either commonplace or more popular than human-on-human sex by 2050. Whatever the case, you're coming -- or should I say arriving -- soon.
Let's talk about sex: This is Computer Love
Computer Love is a semi-regular column exploring the weird world of human sexuality in the 21st century. That's me four months ago, emerging from the frozen tomb of a near decade-long relationship. OK, that's Brendan Fraser, but when I finally surfaced from the cold-comfort coffin of love lost, I was thrust into a strange new world, where courtship starts with a dick pic, dating is done by phone and text messages are the preferred mode of romantic communique.
