My Robot, My Love 

The day is coming when many people will be engaged in intimate relationships with robots. The very idea of this strikes different people in different ways. Some regard the concept as totally outlandish, arguing that sex can be a meaningful and enjoyable experience only with another human being. Some skeptics raise religious objections, based upon the idea of sex as being solely for procreation. Others are curious as to exactly how a robot would function sexually and how it would feel for the human. Some are eager to try robot sex for themselves and ask, “Where can I buy one?” During the course of my research, for my book Love and Sex with Robots, I have sought to counter any skepticism on this subject.

I would not wish to give the impression that I believe sex between two people will ever become outmoded. But what I am convinced of is that robot sex will become the only sexual outlet for a few sectors of the population: the misfits, the very shy, the sexually inadequate and uneducable. For some other sectors of the population, robot sex will be indulged in occasionally, an activity that supplements one’s regular sex life.

Robots may also provide therapeutic experiences, in particular helping those who suffer from psychosexual hangups. Robots, in addition to being excellent sex teachers, will also be sympathetic counselors, curing far more cases of psychosexual inadequacy than could ever be achieved by human therapists. Yet another service for the human participant is the possibility of being able to experiment with different sexualities. People who are uncertain of their own sexuality will be able to try out same-sex and opposite-sex robots in total anonymity. Sexual robots could encourage men toward a deeper exploration of their feelings of emotional attraction to their human sex partners, while women could be encouraged and taught how to achieve greater physical pleasure from sex.

The social and psychological benefits will be enormous. Almost everyone wants someone with whom to have regular sex, but many people have no one. If this natural human desire can be satisfied, surely the world will be a much happier place.

My thesis, that such relationships will inevitably come about within the next few decades and will be considered fairly normal by the middle of this century, is based on the examination of certain parallels that can be demonstrated to exist between human-human sexual relationships as we understand them today, and the human-robot relationships of the future. This evidence is supported by a group of trends in sexuality and sexual attitudes, trends from which I have extrapolated in my research in order to make realistic forecasts as to their effect on the future of human-robot sexual relationships.

The Parallels: The Reasons Why We Make Love

Half a century after Freud’s 1938 proclamation on pleasure being the goal of sex, psychologists began to analyze methodically the most common reasons for making love. When researchers in one study asked the specific question: “What would be your motives for having sexual intercourse?” women typically gave reasons relating to love, while the answers from men focused much more on the physical pleasure.

From psychological studies carried out on the motivations for having sex, a few reasons stand out in the rankings: pure physical pleasure, desire for new experiences, as well as to relieve sexual tension, to have fun, to express emotional closeness and love, and to please a  partner. Only one of the motivations analyzed in these studies cannot be applied to human-robot sexual activity—the desire to procreate.

The most obvious way in which humans obtain pleasure from sex is through orgasm, and a robot that can give its partner great orgasms on demand will therefore be highly prized as a sexual partner. Consider how a simple inanimate sex doll, with no electronic brain, no artificial intelligence, and none of the humanlike characteristics that come from these technologies, can help men to achieve satisfying orgasms. And just imagine how much better it would be for a doll’s user if, instead of a lifeless doll with no intelligence, no conversation, and no sparkle, he had a fembot who told him how much she loved him and what a wonderful lover he was, and who caressed him and employed her other sensual capabilities to heighten his enjoyment of the encounter. A fembot or malebot will also relieve its user’s sexual tensions and provide fun in the form of new sexual experiences.

In addition to the motivations for having sex, seductive factors have been assessed for their effectiveness in leading a person’s date to the bedroom. In a list of the “twenty most effective male acts,” which were analyzed in a study at the University of Michigan, nine could apply to robots, including the top three: 1) he displayed a good sense of humor; 2) he was sympathetic to her troubles; 3) he showed good manners. In any of the nine “acts,” we can replace “he” (the woman’s sexual partner) by “it” (a robot) with no loss of validity. For example, there are already computer programs that can make up new jokes—most of them are not wonderful jokes but some are clever enough to get a smile or a laugh. And being sympathetic and well-mannered come from a combination of empathy and conversational skills—nothing here is beyond the bounds of reasonable expectation for the artificially intelligent robots of the middle of this century.

Trends in the Uses of Technology for Sexual Pleasure

The modern history of sexual technology has its beginnings in late-nineteenth century France, when artificial devices made of rubber and other plastic materials began to be offered for sale, including entire artificial bodies known as homes de voyage or dames de voyage. These provided substitutes for human genitalia, thereby allowing fornication, and the dames were recommended for use by sailors on board ship. Advertisements announced that the body moved like a living being, pressing, embracing, changing position at its owner’s will simply by applying pressure. The apparatus could even be fitted with a phonographic attachment, enabling the doll to speak. These French artifacts were an early form of the upmarket sex dolls of today, and forerunners of the sex robots of coming decades.

By the early 1980s inflatable sex dolls had became quite big business in some countries. Then in 1996 a demand for more accuracy in design led Matt McMullen, a California sculptor, to revolutionize the sex toy industry by launching “Nina”, the first of his RealDoll products. Today the number of upmarket sex doll manufacturers is increasing steadily in the United States, China, Japan, and Europe, as is the number of websites that sell them. In Japan they sell for the equivalent of around $5,000 and can be “hired” from the doll equivalent of a call girl service for around $100 per hour, roughly the same as the cost of a human call girl in Japan. The early successes of these sex-doll-for-hire businesses in Japan and South Korea is a clear indicator of things to come—if static sex dolls can be hired out successfully, then sexbots with moving components seem certain to be even more successful. If vibrators can be such a huge commercial success—millions sell each year in the United Kingdom and tens of millions in the United States—then malebots with vibrating penises surely have great commercial potential.

The development of sex technologies has reflected more general trends in technological development. With the advent of electricity as the power source for many products in the late-nineteenth century came the invention of the electrical vibrator to replace the cumbersome mechanical vibration devices, powered by clockwork for example, which hitherto had been used for the pleasure of women. And when, a century or so later, virtual reality became the buzz-phrase describing some consumer products, a “Virtual Sex Machine” for men was launched in 2004, a product that combines the physical experience of penis vibration generated by the device, with synchronized stimulating videos of women porn stars, giving the user a kind of “virtual reality experience”—having a sexual liaison with a porn star.

The Trend of Changing Attitudes to Sexual Mores

In the early years of the twenty-first century, many people regard the idea of sex with robots as outlandish, outrageous, even perverted. But sexual ideas, attitudes, and mores change with time. In order to demonstrate the extent to which sexual thinking has shifted, particularly during the past century or so, it is helpful to examine changes in attitudes toward four different sexual practices: homosexuality, oral sex, fornication, and masturbation.

Since Victorian times no aspect of human sexuality has been the subject of a more dramatic attitude transformation than homosexuality, for which the death penalty had been applied from biblical times. In the United States and Britain capital punishment for homosexual acts was abolished only in the mid-nineteenth century. Such acts were still punishable by imprisonment in those countries well into the second half of the twentieth century, but by the summer of 2003 many of America’s leading newspapers, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe, were publishing announcements of same-sex commitments in their wedding pages.

Many U.S. states used to have laws concerning oral sex that were, in theory, as harsh as laws on sodomy. The notion that such acts should be illegal appears to have gained currency during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. But by the late 1940s Alfred Kinsey’s research indicated that almost 50 percent of married people of both sexes in America had indulged in oral sex, and today it is viewed very differently from the way it was eighty years ago, being almost de rigeur in most heterosexual relationships.

Another so-called “sin” that has undergone a considerable change in attitude is fornication, in other words sexual intercourse with someone other than a spouse. In medieval times this too could be punishable by death in some countries. Remarkably fornication was a crime until fairly recently in some parts of the United States—it was only in January 2005 that the state of Virginia repealed a law dating back to the early nineteenth century, banning sexual relations between two unmarried, consenting, heterosexual adults. In fact that law had not been enforced since 1847, but it took this long for Virginia to state, formally, that private relationships should be immune from government interference.

Masturbation is another popular sexual practice that was, at one time, punished by the church, and King Charles V’s “Penal Rules” of 1532 even went so far as to establish the death penalty for masturbators (as well as for homosexual behavior and for use of contraceptives). For hundreds of years the medical profession viewed masturbation as the cause of a plethora of horrible diseases, but at the close of the nineteenth century the pioneering British sexologist Havelock Ellis became the first authority to speak out against all this ranting, asserting that the notions of many medical authorities were mistaken, and that masturbation relieved stress and had a sedative effect. Attitudes toward masturbation in the United States and Britain finally changed dramatically in 1950, with the publication of Wilhelm Stekel’s book, Autoeroticism, which suggested that masturbation was universal and normal, and that interference with it was the actual cause of psycho-sexual problems and disorders. Nowadays it is regarded as a perfectly normal activity, practiced by the mentally healthy, and regarded by the medical profession as being free from causing mental illness, physical damage, illness, or death.

Thus we have seen, over time, huge changes in attitude toward all of these sexual practices: homosexuality, oral sex, fornication, and masturbation. All are now widely regarded as perfectly normal and believed to lead to fulfilling relationships and satisfactory sex lives. The rates at which such attitude changes have come about have varied, but some of the most dramatic changes have taken only decades. And as with science and technology, the rates of progress and development in social and sexual ideas are themselves increasing. This will inevitably lead to even more rapid changes in the acceptability of new sexual practices, to the point where sex dolls and sexbots will become widely acceptable within society as our sex partners.

Pointing to the Future

The next stage in the trends discussed here is the design and construction of sexbots, sufficiently human-like in appearance and sufficiently sexually alluring to be taken seriously by many people as their sex partners. When the website www.BetterHumans.com conducted a survey in February 2003 to investigate what sex technology people most desired, humanoid sexbots were the clear favorite with 41 percent of the votes polled, followed by mind-to-mind interfaces with 24 percent, and virtual reality sex with 17 percent. It takes little imagination to appreciate that it is already technically possible to construct a robot that combines sex dolls, electronic sex devices such as vibrators and virtual sex machines, and the look, feel, and functions of android robots. The huge commercial potential of such a combination is what, in my view, will drive the rapid development of sexbots. The media will quickly latch on to this titillating topic, providing interviews with those who try them out, and especially with celebrities who admit to owning one. The publicity will make sexbots respectable, they will be sold in increasing numbers, their prices will come down, and their popularity will rise dramatically.

Dr. David Levy is an artificial intelligence researcher and the president of the International Computer Games Association. His book, Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, was published in November 2007 by HarperCollins.

Copyright © 2008, David N.L. Levy