A campaign is pushing for a ban on the development of sex robots, arguing that they objectify women and perpetuate damaging sexual norms. Does it have a point about sex with robots?
Concerns about sex robots or rather “rape robots” are being designed with a “frigid” setting which is programmed to resist sexual advances have been aired in Parliament amid calls for the tech industry to consider its version of the Hippocratic oath.
Journalists from The Guardian and New Statesman have reported on the sex robot Roxxxy TrueCompanion’s controversial setting “Frigid Farrah”. This setting enables the user to switch Roxxxy’s “personality” mode to resist sexual advances – in effect permitting men to act out their rape fantasies.
Women’s rights activists are converging to condemn Roxxxy. Laura Bates from the Everyday Sexism Project describes Roxxxy as “The sex robot that’s yours to rape for just $9,995”.
Roxxxy is built by the New Jersey-based company TrueCompanion. According to the inventor, founder and president of the company Douglas Hines, each sex robot is custom built for each order. Buyers have the choice of hairstyles, eye colour, skin tone, make-up and even pubic hair style and colour. Furthermore, Roxxxy isn’t limited to sexual uses; she can also carry on a discussion and even expresses her love to you. She can talk to you, listen to you and also feel your touch.
Roxxxy with inventor Douglas Hines
Roxxxy’s body is made from hypoallergenic silicone – the kind of stuff in prosthetic limbs – moulded on a rigid skeleton. She can’t move on her own, but she can be contorted into almost any natural position. To create her shape, a female model spent a week posing for a series of moulds.
The sex robot runs on a self-contained battery that will last for around three hours and is recharged with an electrical cord that plugs into Roxxxy’s back. A motor in the chest pumps warm air through the robot’s body, keeping her warm to the touch. She also has sensors in her hands and genital areas – yes, she is anatomically correct – that trigger vocal responses when touched. And Roxxxy even shudders to simulate orgasm.
When someone speaks to Roxxxy, her computer converts the words to text and then uses pattern-recognition software to match them against a database containing hundreds of appropriate responses. Roxxxy then answers aloud – her prerecorded “voice” is supplied by an unnamed radio host through a loudspeaker hidden underneath her wig.
“Everything you say to her is processed. It’s very near real time, almost without delay,” Hines said of the dynamics of the human-Roxxxy conversation. “To make her as realistic as possible, she has a different dialogue at different times, she talks in her sleep and even snores.” But no worries, guys, Hines states that the snoring feature can be turned off.
Is this a viable product?
Sherri Shaulis, an editor at Adult Video News, a trade magazine for the pornographic industry, says “Yes, there’s a market for it, but it’s a very small market.”
Really? Think again. According to TrueCompanion, they claim to have received more than 4,000 pre-orders for Roxxxy robots, and another 20,000 men have requested information about the product.
Worried?
Kathleen Richardson, robot anthropologist, author of the research paper “The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots”, and founder of the Campaign Against Sex Robots, is too.
On the campaign’s website, Richardson notes that the robots “contribute to inequalities in society” through their marketization of disposable female bodies. After all, Roxxxy is “always turned on” – but you can also turn her off when you’re done with her.
The issue with sex robots in general, not just hypothetical ones programmed to have a “resist” function – is how their existence will affect how human beings interact with each other robots are different from sex dolls and sex toys because they have AI. More than just a mechanism for giving you an orgasm, a sex robot is designed to be a substitute partner: a vibrator doesn’t laugh at your jokes and remember your birthday, but Roxxxy can.
If men become used to having sex with synthetic companions that are programmed to meet their most precise specifications, how will they then interact with real women who have the inconvenience of having their own quirks and free will?
What happens when men get used to having sex with ultra-life-like humanoids whenever and however they want, will they be more likely to expect complete dominance in their relationships with other humans?
Young people who have grown up in the age of online porn might consider shaved pubic hair and double penetration to be completely normal. Similarly, the generation growing up when sex robots are commonplace might see brutally selfish sex as both desirable and achievable.
Sex robots exist purely to satisfy their owners. Is any sexual relationship healthy if it’s only ever about one person’s pleasure? Can sex with a robot ever be consensual? This isn’t about robot rights – it’s about the kind of sex that will become normal within human societies if we start having sex with robots.
Child sex dolls are banned in the UK because of fears they will encourage the desire to abuse among pedophiles. While we might be able to stop them being imported or manufactured here, we can’t stop them being developed overseas.
The most critical question should be asking is why there is a market for sex robots in the first place. Why is it that some people find the idea of a partner without autonomy so attractive? Until we have the answers to that, we’ll need to prepare ourselves for the inevitable rise of sex with robots.
