"The Perfect Companion": From Cyborgs to Gynoids-Sex Robots and the Commodification of Authentic Intimate Experience

Locatelli, Chloé C.

doi:10.30827/digibug.53217

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The RealdollX App is from Realbotix LLC, the robotic and digital development branch of Abyss Creationsan extension of the company best known for their high-end silicone love dolls. While conjecture about RealdollX's AI dolls' future capacities for intimacy dominates academic discourse, initial research into advertising material and customer interaction with the avatar format shows that romance and companionship are strong features pushed to encourage consumption (Locatelli, 2018;Devlin & Locatelli, 2020). The RealdollX application was released in 2019 and to date, only female constructions are available -personal pronouns always gender 'her' female.…”

Section: "Your Perfect Companion": Realdollx Appmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…RealdollX's advertising shows how the promise of emotional interaction, such as companionship though friendship, romance and dispelling loneliness, supersedes sexual content. Upon first entering the website, one is struck by the dearth of sexual content; at no point is the word sex used in relation to the product (Locatelli, 2018). Instead, discourse constellates around themes of romantic love and companionship and is at the forefront of the website.…”

Section: Fig 4: Homepage For the Realdollx Application (Realdollx App...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Development for the RealdollX application was carried out with an initial beta-programme under the name of 'Harmony'(Locatelli, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Rethinking ‘Sex Robots’

Locatelli

2022

jdsr

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This paper interrogates the posthuman potential of sextech aimed at heterosexual men, positing that advertising and design of products with digital femininities emphasise the possibility for emotional interaction. This work firstly applies pressure to the monolithic conceptualisation of ‘sex robots’, that impedes rigorously appraising existing sextech constructions. Applying posthuman theory to sextech, particularly critical posthumanism and the formative work of Donna Haraway, affords this investigation the theoretical rigour to reflect on the potential for emotional interaction with digital feminised others. Through digital media analysis, this paper explores three gendered-female technologies: Azuma Hikari, (2020); the RealdollX Application (2020) and VirtualMate (2020) alongside their concomitant promotional material. This research illustrates that the complex convergence of interactive technologies, digital feminities and emotive advertising suggests a shift into posthuman sextech – where digital feminities are designed and advertised as capable of providing erotic and emotive interaction.

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Section: "Your Perfect Companion": Realdollx Appmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fig 4: Homepage For the Realdollx Application (Realdollx App...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking ‘Sex Robots’

Locatelli

2022

jdsr

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“…The user could potentially feel the touch of the virtual human. A few attempts at commercial solutions exists, even attempts at combining virtual reality with teledildonics (Locatelli, 2018). Trade journal reports about virtual reality teledildonics suggest that this technology is very immature and have major technical challenges ahead (Merchant, 2014).…”

Section: Innovative Technologies and The Future Of Virtual Sexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design fiction exploration of romantic interaction with virtual humans in virtual reality1

Eriksson

2022

FRL

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This article discusses the possibilities and potential issues with romantic and sexual interaction with virtual humans in virtual reality, using the design fiction Into thin air as a starting point for these reflections. Design fiction, a dramatized story by engineers/designers, speculate and critically reflect on advantages and risks with future technology. The primary purpose of the design fiction story utilized in this investigation is to highlight the advantages with air ship traveling (concerning climate impact), but since this was a concept that was difficult to dramatize, I choose to have that as a background setting, and instead foreground a bitter-sweet story about seeking love and sex in different virtual reality simulations during the time onboard an air ship. In most cases these attempts at sexual encounters are with actual women, but in one sequence I bring in the concept of virtual humans. The user wears a full-body haptic feedback suit, so he/she can see, hear and feel the virtual agent. In the design fiction and in this article, I speculate that such virtual agents could be created by including three agents to choose between (automatically generated by algorithms); A) a generic blend of celebrities, B) a recreation of the user’s high school love interest, and C) a recreation of a woman the user just had flirted with. In this article I compare this design fiction scenario with real-life VR applications, trying to explore the feasibility of different virtual human scenarios. Virtual reality developers have so far avoided sexual or romantic content in their experiences, possibly to a large extent because the major distribution platform – Oculus – is controlled by Facebook. Facebook have quite strict regulations concerning what is deemed as appropriate as content, and thus curates the available experiences quite strictly. Some experiences subtly hint at romantic encounters, such as the dating simulators Falling in love and Focus on you. I argue that these two experiences are highly limited and linear. In order to create a more complex and convincing romantic/sexual encounter, the virtual agents would need to be driven by a dialog system and AI. One attempt in that direction is the smartphone app Replika, a chat and voice based virtual agent that tries to give the impression of a caring friend (who can venture into text based sexual encounters). The conclusion is that it seems likely that the VR dating simulations will gradually evolve and become more convincing, primarily depending on Facebook’s control over the market, and the slow but steady progress in dialog systems. The possibility to physically/virtually interact with the beloved virtual agents and have satisfying intercourse seems possible, but not something to expect in the near future. Link to the design fiction: https://chalmersuniversity.box.com/s/xmo1dkihicfxgo6qo4zb2onez45m49fl

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"The Perfect Companion": From Cyborgs to Gynoids-Sex Robots and the Commodification of Authentic Intimate Experience

Cited by 2 publications

References 16 publications

Rethinking ‘Sex Robots’

Rethinking ‘Sex Robots’

Design fiction exploration of romantic interaction with virtual humans in virtual reality1

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