AI companions look set to be the dominant topic in the next Love & Sex With Robots conference: the annual sex robot technology conference scheduled to take place in Montreal, Canada on August 24-25, 2024.
The event, hosted at Université du Québec in Montréal (UQAM), will be a hybrid in-person and online event featuring technology and sex robot academics and enthusiasts. In-person tickets cost CA$287.82 (US$210), and it costs CA$106.77 ($78) to attend via video.
Organizers of the event founded by David Levy, author of the 2007 book Love and Sex With Robots, have released the full schedule of the two-day conference. It reveals that as well as AI companions, the topics of emotion and philosophy related to sex robots will be prominent in talks, forums and presentations.
Keynote speakers for the conference include Delphine DiTecco, who researches the intersections of technology, sexuality and law at Carleton University. Marriage, family and sex therapist Dr Marty Klein, a board member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, will also give a keynote speech.
While the global sex robot industry remains niche, albeit a niche that garners a huge amount of media attention, the Love & Sex With Robots conference is an important indicator of trends within it. The focus of the event has recently shifted closer to AI and software, rather than hardware, in line with the huge leaps we’ve recently seen in AI ability.
Here are some topics that will be explored at the conference.
Romantic AI companions
Romantic AI chatbot companions, which can come in the form of apps such as Replika, have become far more sophisticated and realistic in the past couple of years. Many people form close bonds with AI characters through these apps and services, and it seems a logical step that their technology could one day be properly integrated into large sex robot hardware.
Still, would you be comfortable turning to an AI companion to console you with LLM-generated words of wisdom, if you were dumped by your lover? One workshop at the conference, hosted by bioethics MD/PhD candidate Georges-Philippe Gadoury-Sansfaçon, is titled ‘How Will AI Companions Change the Way Cope With Heartbreak?‘.
The workshop will look at AI companions’ potential role in helping people deal with romantic breakups, which can lead to social withdrawal.
Gadoury-Sansfaçon noted that “developing a relationship with an AI companion after separating from a loved one has the potential to influence human beings in different ways: for some, these companions may facilitate the navigation of future human relationships and identity development, while for others they could amplify existing struggles and create new ones.”
Indeed, considering the newness of romantic AI chatbot technology, there is much debate about whether their use primarily helps people develop social skills, or leads to an erosion of ‘human’ interaction.
Further insight into this could come from a presentation at the conference based around interviews with 30 users of the Replika AI companion app. The interview study looked at how Replika users feel about the erotic role play (ERP) function of the app: basically, its ability to talk dirty to you.
Delving even deeper down the romantic AI rabbit hole will be Kelsey Clough and Reggie Guzman: two researchers who will host a panel titled Muses of the Machine Age: Exploring Artistic Inspiration and Expression With Artificial Companions.
The panel will look at a study the researchers conducted, in which they examined how the chatbot services AvatarOne, Digi, Paradot, and Replika sold the idea of an AI relationship to their customers. The researchers honed in on how these services offer human likeness, constant accessibility, customization and relationship progression as crucial elements to keep people hooked.
Health and reproduction
Can VR sex scenarios help us understand erectile dysfunction (ED) better? This question might not seem the obvious focus of a sex robot conference, but it’s one that will be examined by a group of researchers giving a presentation about a study they conducted about VR and ED.
The research group has proposed that VR should be used more for ED research, which generally tends to be questionnaire-based, and will make the case for this in their presentation. Simon Dubé, who studies ‘erobotics’ and sex in space, is part of the research team.
Another VR-related question sure to be on everyone’s lips at the conference will be: How do heterosexual women’s preferences for big or small dicks change, depending on which stage of their menstrual cycle they are in?
This issue has been examined by a team of researchers who looked at how heterosexual women change the size of ‘synthetic’ genitals in a virtual setting, based on their preferences. They found that these preferences changed depending on which menstrual cycle phase the women were in. They’ll talk about what this could mean with regard to the perception of ‘virtual’ cocks versus real ones in their presentation.
Moving on from sex with robots, how about sex with a car?
PhD candidate Frances H. Maranger, will give a presentation using the 2021 film Titane, in which the lead character has sex with a motor vehicle and somehow becomes impregnated by it, as a jump-off to discuss reproduction issues.
Maranfer said she will use the film (pictured above), directed by Julia Ducournau, “as a case study to explore contemporary cultural anxieties around queer people who choose to reproduce in non-traditional and non-bio-genealogical ways via new reproductive technologies (e.g. IVF; surrogacy).”
The presentation will be titled Immaculate Mechanical Conception: Reproductive Futurism in New French Extremity.
Sex robots and emotion
Sex doll users’ relationships with their dolls will be examined at the conference in a presentation titled Can a Sex Doll Love You Back? A Metaphor Analysis Revealing Reciprocal Care Between Owners and Their Dolls. While the study the presentation will be based on was about sex dolls rather than sex robots, many of its insights will be relevant to humanoids that can whir and speak as well as those that can’t (and perhaps those that deflate).
29 doll users talked about their emotional experiences with their synthetic companion for the study, many of whom owned multiple dolls. One of the main findings was that users tended to view their relationship with their dolls as care-based, and one that included dolls reciprocating care.
The researchers noted: “Importantly, dolls (as opposed to virtual companions) can more easily provide this type of care as they allow for sensory intimacy, such as cuddles, touch, and sex.”
Reggie Guzman (pictured above – he’s the one on the right), an ‘iDollator’, will go further down the robo-emo wormhole by giving a talk called My Artificial Companions: Their Emotions. Guman will make the case for the benefits of deep emotional bonds with sex robots.
Trailing his presentation, he wrote that “the question of whether inanimate objects have emotions is a complex one. While they may not possess the same degree of emotions as humans, they can evoke emotions and form emotional connections through their features and the love, care, and devotion we humans put into them.”
Guzman added: “Whether it is through a chatbot or a beautiful doll with AI voice features, these inanimate objects have the power to elicit strong emotions from users, making them an integral part of human interactions.”
Robot sextech devices
Sometimes you might want to have a deep conversation with your sex robot. Sometimes you might just want it to give you an enjoyably complex blow job.
Steven Beith, the man behind the Rubjoy (pictured below) blow job robot, is set to give a presentation called Sparking a Revolution: The Journey of Robot Sex Machine. It’s billed as an examination of the new generation of sex machines, but expect there to be a lot of promo about the Rubjoy in particular.
Beith has said he will “highlight the collaborative spirit of the enthusiasts and innovators who’ve taken the initial idea and run with it, creating a rich ecosystem of DIY projects, open-source contributions, and virtual experiences that continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”
You can read the conference abstracts in full at the Love & Sex With Robots website.
