Kate Devlin, senior lecturer in social and cultural AI at King’s College London, reaches up to the top shelf of a bookcase in her study and brings down several boxes of sex toys.
“When I was working at Goldsmiths, University of London, I had vibrators lying around all over the place, but I don’t know how conservative they are here,” she says of her new employers, unpacking what looks like a dark blue hollowed-out alien’s egg, which turns out to be the world’s first “guybrator” called Pulse, one of a new generation of “intelligent” sex toys for men.
Devlin, 42, has just written her first book, Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots.
“I never set out to become an expert on such risqué forms of technology, but the book is not just about sex. It’s about the relationship between intimacy and technology,” she explains.
You only have to think of Alex Garland’s film, Ex Machina, with Alicia Vikander as a clever, vengeful sex robot, or Her, Spike Jonze’s romantic whimsy about Joaquin Phoenix falling for an intelligent computer operating system voiced by Scarlet Johansson, to see why sex and tech make such natural bedfellows.
Fantasy, and the desire for companionship at a time when loneliness has never been more prevalent in society, all play their part.
Devlin’s research began four years ago when she decided to write a book about the race to develop the first commercially available sex robot. San Diego’s Abyss Creations has just won that race, with the launch of Harmony, “an interactive robot capable of having sex and making conversation” according to the website.
Made from silicone with details such as skin tone, eye colour, breast size and genitals all customisable (really), Harmony, who speaks in a soft Scottish accent, can talk “quiet”, “kind” or “sexual”.
If the asking price of £8,000 seems steep, she also comes a lot cheaper as a downloadable app for smartphones. Very Her.
Then there’s Harry — who makes jokes and has a permanent erection, although only his head moves and, says Devlin, the designers are having to programme him not to say things such as “I’m going to wear a sexy dress for you”.
Read More
So, could these sex robots spell the end of real relationships? The idea of being able to switch your girlfriend/boyfriend on or off, like Ryan Gosling’s holographic companion Joi in Blade Runner 2049, has a certain appeal, but she thinks the potential market for AI dolls is limited, as the current market for regular sex dolls is so niche.
“There are hundreds, rather than thousands, of people in the UK treating it [doll ownership] as more of hobby than anything else.” You only need to watch Harmony on YouTube to see why; she’s light years behind Joi. Devlin also touches on ethical issues in her book, such as whether acting out rape fantasies on a robot might spill over into real life, what does and does not constitute infidelity, and the laws on importing and owning child-like sex dolls.
Paradoxically, she thinks the desire to breathe life into Barbie or Ken lookalikes is precisely what’s holding the evolution of these sex robots back. “They’re constrained by being made to look human. They’re just high-end sex dolls with a chatbot for moaning and a bit of vibrating.”
In fact, Devlin says the future of sex tech lies elsewhere, as she learned from running “sex hackathons” at Goldsmiths, where techies could introduce new ideas and prototypes.
“It’s about combining AI with wearable sex toys, or using VR headsets. We can stream data from our bodies to give us instantaneous readings of heart rates and muscle movements, and we have smart fabrics, soft robotics and sensors — materials that can respond to touch and touch us back. My own idea is a sex duvet made from strokeable fabric that vocally rumbles as it is touched and that curls around me as I sink into it.”
While the sex tech industry is forecast to be worth £23 billion by 2020, the market for toys, rather than dolls, is still aimed predominantly at women.
“Men tend not to use sex toys on their own — it’s partly an ego thing.” Except in Japan, where manufacturers such as Tenga make sex toys that look like patterned roll-on deodorants, because obscenity laws forbid depictions of real genitalia.
Devlin is hopeful the possibilities for increasing happiness through sex tech are limitless and “the future of intimacy is a network of connected people, who want, as humans have always wanted, to be together”.
Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots by Kate Devlin (Bloomsbury, £16.99) is published on October 18.