The End of Sex Robots: Porn Robots and Representational Technologies of Women and Girls

Digital Lovers and Jealousy: Anticipated Emotional Responses to Emotionally and Physically Sophisticated Sexual Technologies

“…Benefits include entertainment, pleasure, and a capacity to support safe exploration of a diverse range of sexual expression [1,2,14], as well as the potential to ameliorate harmful paraphilias [23] and to mitigate the anger and violence of those forsaken by mating markets [1]. These technologies also elicit concerns, including that doing deeply human things with objects might lead to a rise in objectification, particularly of women (e.g., [8]; but see [24,25]). While the question of objectification remains open, there is little doubt that humans readily treat objects-in the form of robots and other artificially intimate technologies-as if they were, at least in some respects, human (see [1,2,9,13,26]).…”

“…First, sex toys already exist and are part of public discussion [58,59,65], so they may be less unfamiliar and perhaps hold less taboo than virtual reality [12] or sex robots [30,66]. Second, there has been sustained media interest in sex robots over the past decade, and much discussion about potential downsides like furthering the objectification of and violence against women (see [2,8,75]). Virtual reality digital lover technologies are likely to be the least familiar type, although some resonances with pornography [1,12] may make them seem less unfamiliar, at least to some study participants.…”

“…Every technological innovation that touches human social lives spurs new questions concerning how human users will interact with the new technologies and whether the use of those technologies will change human-human interactions and societal processes [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. This is true of the fastmoving contemporary developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, haptics, and material sciences that have contributed to a flourishing ecosystem of new technologies that stimulate human needs and preferences for friendship, intimacy, touch, and sexual contact.…”