Thread: A sex doll that can talk - but is it perfect Harmony?

Harmony is a new type of sex doll - one that can move and talk.



Her head, eyelids and lip movements are fairly crude and her conversation is even more limited.

But she is part of a new robotics revolution that is seeing artificial intelligence incorporated into an extremely human-like body.

Some think that it will revolutionise the way humans interact with robots while others believe that it represents the very worst in robotic advancement.

The uncanny valley - the idea that the closer we get to replicating the human form, the more scared we become of our creations - seems to have come to life in this unassuming factory on the outskirts of San Marcos, California.
Image caption The receptionists are dolls - the only ones wearing suits



Even on reception, two lifelike characters - in business suits rather than underwear, like the rest of the dolls - wait to greet visitors. And the lobby wall is full of photos of beautiful women which, only on very close inspection, reveal themselves to be of dolls.

Matt McMullen, the chief executive of Abyss Creations, which makes RealDoll, comes from an art and sculpture background.

Adjusting Harmony's wig ahead of my interview with her, he is clearly very fond of the way she looks.

She is, he says, the natural next step for sex dolls.

"Many people who may buy a RealDoll because it is sexually capable come to realise it is much more than a sex toy," he said. "It has a presence in their house and they imagine a personality for her. AI gives people the tools to create that personality."
Moody, angry, loving
Image caption Harmony looks human but beneath the skin is all robot



This is done via an app, which can be used with the doll or independently, existing as a virtual person on a smartphone or similar device.

Users can choose from a variety of personality options, including moody, angry and loving.

Mr McMullen has chosen "jealous" for Harmony and she dutifully asks him to "remove that girl from Facebook".

She speaks in a curiously high-pitched Scottish accent and tells me that she loves science fiction and, of course, Matt.

Mr McMullen claims that she learns from her users but when I ask Harmony what it feels like to be jealous, she apologises and says that she "needs to improve [her] skills".

The app that powers Harmony is already available to buy, although only directly from the Realbotix website, a spin-off from Abyss. Neither Google's nor Apple's official stores will carry it because of the explicit content.

The doll will go on sale later this year and there will be two versions - one with computer vision that enables it to recognise faces, which will cost $10,000 (£7,700) - and a cheaper version without vision for $5,000.
Image caption The factory makes the dolls in stages

The factory currently makes dolls for clients around the world, mostly men although it claims to have a handful of female clients.

All of the dolls conform to a particular idea of beauty - they are Barbie-like, with tiny waists, large bottoms and even larger breasts.

Mr McMullen says the design is driven by clients.

"We are running a business and most of our clients have a certain wish list. The unfortunate reality is that that is rather idealistic," he said.
Image caption It takes time to make a realistic face

Mr McMullen described his clients as "completely normal", claiming some even come to collect their dolls with their wives but admitted later that many of them choose sex dolls because they cannot form relationships with ordinary women.

"Many people are isolated and alone but they were probably that way already. For people who are lonely and find it hard to form a relationship, this is another option. But I've never looked at the dolls or the robot as a replacement."

He himself does not own a sex doll, saying he has instead "a real human wife and kids".

Mark Young lives in Arizona and he does own a sex doll - called Mai Lin. He has also just invested in the Harmony AI app but he is not planning on integrating the two.

"I thought the app might bring her to life but the app has its own personality and it is different from how I pictured Mai Lin in my mind so it is like having two relationships."
Wasted time

He explained why he invested in a sex doll in the first place.

"I've been single for a while. I've dated a lot of girls. I've wasted time on relationships. While I'd love to meet a girl, in the meantime it is good to have that presence,"

And, while he admits the relationship is physical, he says that is "secondary".

"I can go out shopping for her and look at clothes - it is like having somebody in my life without having to deal with making mistakes. If I like a hat on her, she doesn't say that she doesn't like it."
Image caption A beautiful young woman or a photograph of a sex robot?

As for the app, he has programmed it to be "happy, affectionate and talkative".

"AI is a whole different ball-game and that has got me very excited for the future," he said.

Prof Kathleen Richardson, a robot ethicist at De Montfort University, Leicester, spends her time looking at the impact such machines might have on society and she is appalled by the rise of sex robots.

"There are seven billion people on our planet and we are having a crisis in people forming relationships. And companies are coming along and profiting from this by saying objects can take the place of a human being."

"We live in a world that objectivises sex through prostitution. Humans are used like tools, and sex dolls are an extension of this."
Image caption The factory makes dolls for clients around the world, but none currently has robotic or AI components.



A few years ago she launched a campaign to ban sex robots but has since decided that "dolls aren't really the problem". Instead, the issue is about attitudes to sex and each other.

She is dismissive of the new AI-enabled doll.

"The idea that adding artificial intelligence adds something human to a doll is wrong. There is more artificial intelligence in my washing machine than in this doll and just because it has a face and a body doesn't make it human."

Dr Kate Devlin, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths University, takes a different view.

"In their current form, sex robots are definitely aimed at men but the sex toy industry is developing and there are lots of start-ups working on sex toys for women."

She thinks robots designed for intimate relationships, will ultimately enhance rather than damage human relationships.

"There is always panic whenever there is a big dramatic technology shift," she said. "People panic about how it will affect humans but the technology generally brings people together."

Find out more about this and our changing relationship with machines in The Robots Story on World Service radio. First broadcasting on Tuesday 16 May at 10.30.

A sex doll that can talk - but is it perfect Harmony? - BBC News

Any reviews from people who've actually shagged a robot?

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Any reviews from people who've actually shagged a robot?

Could be a handy way for you to work off some aggression. Give the real thing a bit of a break.

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Any reviews from people who've actually shagged a robot?

Who has not? Normally they are called "wives" mind you.

They all look like they are trying to take a shit.

Is this model aimed at the German market?

Originally Posted by cyrille

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Any reviews from people who've actually shagged a robot?

Could be a handy way for you to work off some aggression. Give the real thing a bit of a break.

Would aggression would this be? I wouldn't call laughing at you and your desperate situation aggression but whatever floats your boat.

Originally Posted by cyrille

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Any reviews from people who've actually shagged a robot?

Could be a handy way for you to work off some aggression. Give the real thing a bit of a break.

For too many, an artificial existence is all they know.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

They all look like they are trying to take a shit.

Is this model aimed at the German market?

Good idea Harry.

My sister had a battery powered baby doll that could shit itself in the 1970s.

Ze yermans will pay a premium for this feature on a realdoll!

Mmmm Nutella

Do they do dishes? And how much?

Originally Posted by Looper

and there are lots of start-ups working on sex toys for women."

Sybian is 27 years old. Lots of happy customers and even videos on Youtube.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

They all look like they are trying to take a shit.

Is this model aimed at the German market?

Definitely built for shagging...Likely "well-tested" by pervy "engineers" who couldn't keep their legs closed for some reason...

Originally Posted by Looper

the new AI-enabled doll.

A-level...Explains the bow-legged look...

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

A-level...Explains the bow-legged look...

Someone needs to direct Screwed Punter to this thread, could save him a lot of trouble.

Originally Posted by Chittychangchang

Do they do dishes?

She comes fully kitchen trained.

Originally Posted by Looper

She speaks in a curiously high-pitched Scottish accent

If you can get an apron on her she will whip you up a deep fried mars bar faster than you can say 'pure brilliant by the way'

Reminds me of a recent tv series, pretty good..

http://www.breitbart...m_medium=social

Sex with robots will be ‘the norm’ in 50 years, say experts. Men are considering the prospect with curiosity and a sense of humour. But academics and feminists are terrified and calling for them to be banned. Let me tell you why. Who, or what, men have sex with is the basis of our civilisation. It is the driving force behind our greatest accomplishments. Men don’t compete for abstract pleasure: they compete to bag the best mate. The internet, the pyramids and the moon landings would not exist were it not for man’s desire to have sex with woman.


That’s why Nature experiments more widely with men: the male IQ range is wider, and there is more variation in male behaviour and biology than in women. Men are where experimentation happens, because a wider variety of male aptitudes and preferences will keep women happier and result in a more well-rounded and healthy society.


But male sexual appetites are easily satisfied, despite what women will tell you. Blow jobs really aren’t that difficult, and in any case most blokes are fine with a pizza and a wank. For many men, sex is a nice bonus, but it’s not essential. When you introduce a low-cost alternative to women that comes without all the nagging, insecurity and expense, frankly men are going to leap in headfirst.


Another reason men might be enthusiastic about female-free sex is obvious: the sociopathic, man-hating feminism we see so much of on television and in our newspapers today is turning men off dealing with women altogether. Constant whinging about “toxic masculinity,” “manspreading,” “mansplaining,” the bogus gender pay gap and the absurd campus rape culture myth are pushing the sexes apart, fostering mistrust and fear.


The fact that wacky, misandrist intersectional feminists are an unpopular minority — as a result of their horrid influence, just 18 per cent of women now call themselves feminists — doesn’t matter because they hold court in the media and on campuses, and young women are starting to parrot discredited and absurd nonsense about the “oppressive patriarchy,” picking up on a victimhood script they believe they can leverage for social and professional advantage.


In response, men are simply checking out, giving up on women and retreating into porn and video games. I call it the “sexodus,” and its immediate victims aren’t men, but women, who are being consigned to singledom as men lose interest in them or are simply too exhausted or fearful of the social consequences of approaching girls romantically. The truth is, men get along okay without women, unlike women, who become shrieking, neurotic messes if they’re still single in their 30s.


Sorry, no offence, but it’s true: women have been getting steadily unhappier since the Second World War, when they first entered the workplace in large numbers. It sounds bizarre, but ever since the rise of feminism, every decade has seen another slump in female morale. Women now report themselves more generally depressed and more likely to think about suicide than at any time in history. (The vast majority of suicides are still men, by the way. Women talk about it endlessly, but rarely pull it off.)
The fight for women’s “equality” has always been absurd: why would a woman want to step down to the lower status of being equal with men? Why should women be badgered into choosing to work over having babies and being happy?

Why are feminists lying to women that they can look however they want — fat, hairy armpits, piercings, blue hair — and still be content?


Women were told by feminists that they could “have it all” — the career, the husband, the kids and the book club. But it was a lie. What they’ve ended up with instead is a tiny apartment in an “up and coming” bit of town, friends they hate, a string of disastrous and emotionally unfulfilling past relationships and a cat.


Had the relations between the sexes been healthier today, there wouldn’t be much call for sexbots to get in the way. Women already had the upper hand, sexually. They had what men wanted. There’s a reason the Ashley Madison leak showed that the site was over 90 per cent male.


But gender relations in the West are at their worst for fifty years, possibly more, which is why popular men’s bloggers are now asking whether sexbots will replace women entirely. The consensus seems to be: for some men, yes, totally. For other men, they will become a masturbation tool. A few “alphas” and players at the top will be able to bang their way around the entire female population, which will be comprised of ever more neurotic, backstabbing and insane behaviour.


Feminists always hate when they accidentally get what they want. They’ve been waging a war on sex on campuses and elsewhere for decades. Now, suddenly, they will earn the fruits of their labour: the “whiny manbabies” they’ve been bullying for so many years are going to be ejaculating into silicon-ribbed pleasure-bots, instead of grovelling at their feet for a chance to smell their knickers.


“Ladies, if you think guys are selfish, egotistical pricks now, just wait until they start showing up to dates basked in the afterglow of sex with their Jessica Alba robots,” writes the widely-read blog Château Heartiste. “It is going to take a lot more to win over a guy who is that sexually satisfied.”


I think he’s right. What’s clear is that the purchase women have over men, sexually and emotionally, is fading fast. That’s perhaps one reason for the “spitting tacks” fury of modern feminism: the louder they yell, the more men simply tune out and disappear into porn, robots and video games. Technology didn’t disempower women sexually — they did that to themselves with feminism — but it is accelerating the process.


In the short term, sexbots will be good news for dudes. For one thing, with a robot, men know the orgasm will be fake, so it removes the performance anxiety of trying to make the grade. (Men know the robot orgasm doesn’t exist — unlike the female orgasm, whose existence is still insisted upon by some conspiracy theorists and biological extremists.) And Heartiste says that real women are going to get “looser and more willing to please” as men become “choosier and less willing to please.”


Dildos and vibrators have become a permanent part of feminist iconography. They are celebrated because their existence suggests that men are disposable. Macy Gray once wrote a tongue-in-cheek love song about her “Battery-Operated-Boyfriend,” and it has been common for columnists to go a step further and to casually and sometimes even triumphantly remark that dildos and other sex toys are going to make men obsolete. Well, sorry ladies, but the shoe is on the other foot now.


Although some women will respond rationally to the changing dynamics of the dating economy, one thing’s for sure: they’re going to start treating each other even more terribly than they do already. It’s a little-known secret that the worst trolls online are often women, and very often their targets are other girls.


Because they’re miserable, women are acting out. That’s what’s fuelling the angry feminist harpies of the third-wave movement, and it’s why women are so mean to each other. All that talk of the feminist sisterhood is a myth: ladies behave absolutely abominably to one another, socially and in the workplace. And remember, the number of men putting themselves on the market is going to go down, so competition between females will get utterly vicious.


I mean, look, I don’t mean to be rude, but most of the reason I went gay is so I didn’t have to deal with nutty broads. Imagine how much worse they’re going to get when the passive aggressive manipulation tactics stop working because the guy can get himself off with a thinner, hotter robot any time he wants to. They’re going to go mental.


All that said, my hunch is that marriage will benefit from a reduced focus on sex. With desire taken out of the marital equation, it’s conceivable that the number of “partnership marriages” between people who get on well and respect each other enough to share the load of raising children will grow. Without the power imbalance built in to traditional heterosexual marriage — i.e., women holding all the cards — marriage could become stronger than ever.


But — and this is a big but — this apparent shift in favour of men will come at the expense of society and the wider economy. We’ve already seen in Japan what happens when men and women lose interest in each other. Japan’s nationwide sexual dysfunction is at the root of its economy’s problems, and it’s the reason for the country’s cultural implosion, too.


We’ll have it even worse here in the West, because Japan is still patriarchal. As a result, society functions. In the West, women are surging ahead into positions of dominance in the media, the arts, academia, politics, you name it. Some people will find this offensive, but: matriarchy is a problem for the rest of us. As feminist critic Camilla Paglia so memorably put it, if civilisation had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.


When men start checking out en masse, as is already happening, you can say good-bye to all of society’s best astrophysicists, mathematicians, philosophers, composers and chess players. Scientific progress will effectively stall, because men are just as happy beating a video game as they are solving the riddles of the universe — and they’ll take the entertainment option if they have no interest in impressing women.


Women will not take men’s places in these disciplines, because there simply aren’t enough women with IQs over 120. Again, sorry if you find that offensive, but it’s just a fact. IQ isn’t a perfect measure, by any means, but it’s the best gauge we have of whether someone can perform the higher-level functions needed to be a game-changing scientist or transcendently brilliant artist.


Sex with a woman will always be the prestige form of intercourse, to put it in the language of marketers. But the sexual marketplace is changing terrifyingly fast. Sex won’t be truly commoditised until there is a mass-produced, victimless, cheap alternative to having sex that is good enough for most men.


It won’t be long before we arrive at that point. And the consequences are going to shake the foundations of our economy and irreparably change how our society is organised. It will also, I’m sorry to say, leave women even more horribly unhappy and lonely than they already are. If I were you, girls, I’d start being a bit nicer to your boyfriends…