Age verification: A Decade of Coverage
95 entries in this thread.
Topic
Academic Research
Recent reporting, brand coverage, ongoing story threads, and source-backed context from SEXTECHGUIDE.
Image-based abuse: tracking the law, the tech, and the gap between them
46 entries in this thread.
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News Self-attracted and narcissistic? You’re the most likely person to want a sex robot copy of yourself
A study of 406 autosexual people by Illinois State University found narcissism correlates with purchase intent for self-replicating sex robots, though the real-world market for such products barely exists.
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News ‘Sexual double standard’: Men seen with more disgust than women when using sextech
University of New Brunswick researchers found men are judged more harshly than women for using sextech, publishing the first empirical evidence of a sexual double standard in The Journal of Sex Research.
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News London Tech Abuse Conference 2026 to cover deepfakes, cyberstalking and online dating
UCL's Gender and Tech Research Lab is hosting a three-day Tech Abuse Conference in London in May 2026, covering deepfakes, cyberstalking, and online dating safety, with keynote speakers from Cornell Tech and Google.
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Roundup Dating appdates (Sep ‘25): Bumble’s AI matchmaker, Japan’s virtual girlfriends, and why psychopaths win at dating apps
Bumble is building a separate LLM-powered dating app with per-match monetization, while Match Group banned 660,000 Australian accounts and a Japanese app lets AI characters reject you.
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News Legal scholars advocate criminalizing VR ‘rape’
Legal scholars Clare McGlynn and Carlotta Rigotti argue in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies that non-consensual sexual conduct in metaverse spaces should be criminalized and reframed as 'meta-rape'.
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Roundup Dating appdates (April ’25): Big verification push, massive data leak, apps ‘officially’ stressful, and more
Tinder and Bumble expand mandatory ID verification, nearly 1.5 million images leaked from LGBTQ+ and kink dating apps built by M.A.D Mobile, and new research links dating app use to cortisol and dopamine dysregulation.
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News Send your taste? Scientists make ‘electronic tongue’ that transfers flavor
US scientists published a peer-reviewed e-Taste system in Science Advances that encodes flavor via five edible chemicals, hitting 87% accuracy in taste recognition tests.
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News AI companions set to dominate discussion at Love & Sex With Robots 2024
Love & Sex With Robots 2024 convenes in Montreal on August 24-25, with AI companions, sex doll emotional bonds, and VR research dominating a schedule that signals the field's ongoing pivot from hardware to
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News Beyond the Interface: Free online sextech, AI, VR, and sex worker conference set for October 2024
York University's Critical Trafficking and Sex Work cluster is hosting a free Zoom conference on sextech and sex work in October 2024, with submissions still open.
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News Smiles better: Humanoid robot skin is becoming more realistic
University of Tokyo and Harvard researchers developed a V-shaped anchor system for attaching synthetic skin to robots, with clear implications for more realistic sex robots.
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Feature ‘Is sex with a robot cheating?’ What 10 years of research tells us about sex robots
A decade of sex robot research reveals consistent findings on attitudes, sexism, infidelity, and therapeutic potential, while exposing the field's reliance on hypothetical surveys over real owner data.
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News Lightbulb moment? Wearable Kaisar LED penis ‘horseshoe’ claims to increase sexual performance
South Korean startup Kaisar launched a $239 LED penis wearable claiming photobiomodulation therapy improves sperm motility and erections, backed only by mouse trials so far.
