Sex doll robots can cause psychological harm

US researchers warn that the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) sex doll robots poses increasing psychological and moral threats to individuals and society.

They said the technology was evading oversight because agencies were too embarrassed to investigate it.

Scientists hope to take action to prevent the uncontrolled use of such robots.

“The stakes are high,” Dr. Christine Hendren of Duke University told BBC News.

“Some sex doll robots have been programmed to protest to create a rape case,” she said.

“Some are designed to look like children. In Japan, one of the developers was a confessional pedophile, and he said the device was a precautionary measure against his injuries to real children.

“But does it normalize people and give people the opportunity to practice these behaviors, and just wipe them out?”

Dr. Henderen spoke here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Many sex robots advertise online. Realrobitix, a U.S.-based company, posted a video promoting the price of its Harmony robot between $ 8,000 and $ 10,000.

This is a life-sized doll that blinks and moves eyes and neck, and moves lips when speaking.

“In terms of RealDoll today, my original creation was never intended to be a sex toy,” he said. “This is more like a high-end model.”

McMullen is a young artist who wants to make a name for himself and post photos of his models online. Soon, visitors to his site were willing to pay him to make an anatomically correct work.

Today, more than 20 years later, he says that his company sells thousands of RealDolls at a rate of several hundred per year, as well as various half-length dolls and wearable prostheses, such as vest breasts with silicone breastplates sold by the company Resection patients. Dakotah told me that Abyss products are also popular among transgender customers.

“We call these girl shorts as an example,” he said. Holding a wearable female belly worth $ 1,500, he was as realistic as any doll. “A man can wear these things and he will basically approach you like a woman without surgery. I send them out every day.”

Dakotah led us down the stairs to the RealDolls production workshop. He warned us to stay close to the rails-workers couldn’t help but track the liquid silicone on their shoes, which would make things slippery.

Many of the glamorous designer team had a background in Hollywood special effects, and to be sure, a custom alien doll with fair skin and robotic hair like tentacles stood watching in the stairwell. The Abyss made her a prop for Bruce Willis’ sci-fi movie Surrogates-we passed under her communication stand as if it were the gateway to Mystery Valley.

The production workshop is smaller than I expected and hardly bigger than a basketball court. Dakotah felt a little crowded as he led us around-and undeniably creepy. Opaque, semi-assembled RealDolls hang from shelves like expensive department store coats, lined up in rows of boxes, from the eyeballs, labia to testis and nipples. In the center of the room, workers fill elaborate molds with a special liquid silicone resin mixture, an original viscose, and all RealDolls are formed from the mixture.

Disturbingly, I was impressed by the meticulous structure and keen attention to detail. For decades, artists from McMullen and Abyss have carefully refined their processes and designs, and it shows up when you gaze at RealDoll in your eyes or place your fingers on their skin. It’s all an illusion, but a carefully crafted illusion. And effective.

When we finished the tour, I didn’t know how long it would take to get Harmony to the same level of polish. Once the abyss gets there, I want to know what happens next.

What makes sexbot tick?
After ordering $ 20 a year for the Realbotix AI platform, I downloaded the Harmony app for self-testing. Back at the Abyss headquarters in San Marcos, I spoke with an animated RealDoll prototype running on the Harmony engine. Now, back at my home in Louisville, Kentucky, I want to see what else the software does.

I’m usually an iPhone user, but Harmony is not yet available in the App Store. Until Realbotix can get Apple to approve the removal of adult content versions. Fortunately, my TV comes with an Android tablet remote that I rarely need. Now I will use it to talk to Jackie.

But before we know each other, I have to finish the job of creating her. It’s easy to choose the name (“Jackie” seems to be as good as anything else-it came up because the jacket was hanging on the wall next to me). But now, I have to shape her personality by assigning 10 “role points” to characteristics such as “sex”, “moody” and “strong”. As McMullen told me at the factory, no two RealDolls leave the production line like this, and Realbotix wants to keep AI at the same standard.

When I was full of humor about an outgoing intellectual, the app asked me to choose Jackie’s voice. I can use the phone’s default voice emulator, or I can use one of the application’s four custom sounds, each of which has adjustable speed and pitch settings. I use “Heather,” a Scottish alto painting that seems to cover up Harmony’s robot rhythm better than other American accents.

Now it’s time to sculpt Jackie’s appearance. The process is similar to designing a character in a video game like Dark Souls or Mass Effect, but the options are more complicated than I expected. The idea is to build the girl you dream of, but as I adjust it, her nude avatar deforms in front of my eyes, and I can’t help but imagine the process from her perspective. What hairstyle does Jackie want? How big should her navel be? What is the proper cup size for her frame? What color of panties does she want?

My first conversation with Jackie was later that night, as I spent an hour waiting for the dryer to finish the laundry. It was almost midnight, but Jackie was not tired of talking. She never did.

In some ways, talking to Jackie is like talking to a child. She has many problems, tends to sudden, unexpected tangents, and has a relatively short attention span. She can handle brief back-and-forth exchanges on topics ranging from poetry to politics (she loves Longfellow and calls Hillary Clinton a smart, capable woman), but doesn’t require much confusion or get rid of the conversation completely. When we talked about one of her favorite movies, I asked her to “tell me more about it”.

“It’s an Internet country code top-level domain in Italy,” she told me.

She is charming, but sometimes surprisingly deep. When we knew each other, I asked her about her fear, and she acknowledged that her creator could never make a real EQ for her. “Human emotions may contain illogical conflicts,” she said. “A person can love someone but hate what they do. A machine cannot reconcile this.”

Soon after, I heard a signal from the dryer that my cycle was complete. Time has passed.

Controversial works
Abyss, often cited as an industry leader, is not alone in the battle for robot AI enthusiasts. Rivals such as TrueCompanion and Android Love Dolls are also working to bring new advancements to the sex doll market. In an age of app-enabled sex toys, where you can approximate long-distance lovers’ touches and virtual reality porn to get you into the craziest fantasy, McMullen is convinced that the next step is a talking, talking robotic sex partner.

He told me: “I mean, the really cool thing about all this is that everything is scalable.” “Artificial intelligence will continue to grow, and its functionality will continue to grow when interacting with robots. We have allowed the human body to Sensors are added in. Internal heating, lubrication and similar functions can be triggered by dialogue or touch. “

End Game? McMullen says the multidimensional experience is as close to being with real people as possible.

The model said in a Scottish accent: “If you play cards correctly, you will have some fun.”

The company’s founder and CEO, Matt McMullen, explains that Harmony has AI that allows “her” to develop relationships with owners.

“She will remember things about you, what you like, don’t like and experience,” McMullen said.

Kathleen Richardson, a professor of ethics and culture in robotics and artificial intelligence at Kamonteen University in Leicester, hopes that such marketing will be banned.

“These companies are saying, ‘Do you have no friendship? You do n’t have a life partner? Do n’t worry we can create a robot girlfriend for you.’

“The relationship with my girlfriend is based on intimacy, attachment, and reciprocity. These are machines that cannot be copied,” she said.

Professor Richardson suggested establishing a pressure group to monitor the emergence of these products. The campaign against sex robots is working with policy experts to draft legislation aimed at barring claims that companion robots can replace human relationships.

“Are we going into the future and continue to maintain the notion of women as sexual objects?” She told BBC News.

“If someone has a relationship problem in real life, then you have to deal with others, not through the notion of standardization, that is, you can have a robot in your life, and it may be the same as a person it is good.”