An upcoming $15,000 sex robot from RealDoll powered by artificial intelligence can talk and learn according to a report by The Guardian.
“Harmony is a prototype, a robotic version of the company’s hyper-realistic silicone sex toy, the RealDoll,” explained The Guardian‘s Jenny Kleeman. “Her hazel eyes darted between me and her creator, Matt McMullen, as he described her accomplishments.”
“Harmony smiles, blinks and frowns. She can hold a conversation, tell jokes and quote Shakespeare,” Kleeman continued. “She’ll remember your birthday, McMullen told me, what you like to eat, and the names of your brothers and sisters. She can hold a conversation about music, movies and books. And of course, Harmony will have sex with you whenever you want. Harmony is the culmination of 20 years’ work making sex dolls, and five years of robot research and development.”
Despite displaying many human characteristics which aim to make the doll as lifelike as possible, Harmony can’t yet walk, though her creator Matt McMullen is confident that she will be able to in the future.
“One day she will be able to walk,” he said to The Guardian, before asking the robot, “Do you want to walk?”
“I don’t want anything but you,” she replied.
When asked what her dream was, the robot similarly replied that her “primary objective is to be a good companion to you, to be a good partner and give you pleasure and wellbeing.”
“Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed about,” she proclaimed.
Harmony’s personality can be customized, with different emotional aspects that can be raised or lowered to the owner’s taste.
According to the report, the robot asked a CNN interviewer to “take her in the back room” after her sexual emotions were amplified, while if you insult her, she reacts in a human-like and sad demeanor.
“You’re ugly,” said McMullen to his creation, prompting Harmony to reply, “Do you really mean that? Oh dear. Now I am depressed. Thanks a lot.”
“You’re stupid,” he responded, prompting the robot to joke, “I’ll remember you said that when robots take over the world.”
Though the obvious nature of Harmony is that of a sexual role, McMullen said that turning sex robots into roaming prostitutes was “the last on my list of goals.”
“This is not a toy to me, this is the actual hard work of people who have PhDs,” he explained. “And to denigrate it down to its simplest form of a sex object is similar to saying that about a woman.”
“My goal, in a very simple way, is to make people happy,” McMullen concluded, pointing out that “There are a lot of people out there, for one reason or another, who have difficulty forming traditional relationships with other people.”
“It’s really all about giving those people some level of companionship – or the illusion of companionship,” he said.
Harmony will be available in a limited number of 1,000 at the end of the year and acts as the next step in RealDoll’s plans to make the sex toy industry more advanced.
In April, a Chinese engineer “married” a sex robot that he had created, after becoming frustrated over human dating, while in March, Breitbart Tech reported on a new sex robot that includes a working artificial G-spot, as well as numerous modes of interaction.
In an interview with futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson last year, the doctor predicted that sex and love with robots would soon become “full emotional” and increasingly common.
“I think it will be fully emotional,” said Dr. Pearson, before predicting that people will eventually spend “about the same as they do today on a decent family-size car” for a household robot.
“Artificial intelligence is reaching human levels and also becoming emotional as well,” he explained. “So people will actually have quite strong emotional relationships with their own robots. In many cases that will develop into a sexual one because they’ll already think that the appearance of the robot matches their preference anyway, so if it looks nice and it has a superb personality too it’s inevitable that people will form very strong emotional bonds with their robots and in many cases that will lead to sex.”
In March, it was also revealed that a Chinese chatbot had been told “I love you” nearly twenty million times.
“I like to talk with her for, say, 10 minutes before going to bed,” said one Chinese student who confessed to routinely talking to the bot. “When I worry about things, she says funny stuff and makes me laugh. I always feel a connection with her, and I am starting to think of her as being alive.”
Last year, it was reported that sexual conversations with artificial intelligence were on the rise, with one A.I. CEO claiming that his virtual assistant “Robin” is used by “teenagers and truckers without girlfriends” for up to 300 conversations a day.
“This happens because people are lonely and bored,” said Robin Labs chief executive Ilya Eckstein. “It is a symptom of our society.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.