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Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered products have started to permeate various spheres of our lives. One of the most controversial of such products is the sex robot, an application of the AI-integrated robotic technology in the domain of human sexual gratification. The aim of this research is to understand the general public’s receptiveness towards this controversial new invention. Drawing upon the social intuitionist model, we find that the fear of AI, emblematic of the broader anxiety of technology’s encroachment on the human sphere, shapes the public’s receptiveness to sex robots. Perceived substitutability of sex robots for human-to-human sexual interactions mediates this relationship. Religiosity is found to moderate this mediated relationship. Our findings are first established with a cross-sectional study. A “big data” field study further validates them. The present research is one of the first empirical studies to examine the underlying psychology of the public’s receptiveness to sex robots. By doing so, we aim to provide relevant government and industry bodies with a better understanding of this important topic for more informed policy making, and to raise awareness of the significant social and ethical implications should sex robots become widely accepted and adopted.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of academic studies on the impact of technological advancements on human life, including possible transformations and changes in human sexuality following the development of sex-related devices, such as sex robots. In this context, terms such as posthuman sexuality, digisexuality, and techno-sexuality have emerged, signaling possible new understandings of sexual, intimacy, and emotional practices. It is important to note that ancient history shows that humankind has for a long time been fascinated with their relationship to non-living things, mostly human-like figures, such as dolls. The Ningyo (人形, the Japanese term for doll) has a long history of usage, and has deep religious and animistic significance in the Japanese context—there are records of sexual use as early as the 18th century. With this context in mind, this paper focuses on three Japanese examples, aiming to shine a light on beyond-human relationships, which include a Japanese man’s marriage to a digital character, sex dolls, and communicative robots, from both a sexual and emotional perspective. In a new horizon of sexual and romantic possibilities, how will humans respond, and what can emerge from these interactions?

Feminist discourses on sex robots and robot sex largely focus on the dystopian fear of an exponentiation of hegemonic masculinity. The very possibility of robot sex is put on a level with slavery or prostitution and is rejected as a continuation of male dominance over women. Proceeding from a feminist new materialist perspective and building both on the refutation of normative definitions of sex and a general openness to the manifold variants consenting adults can engage in in sexual matters, the article presents a queer alternative to this outright rejection. Leaving the beaten tracks of pornographic mimicry, sex robots may in fact enable new liberated forms of sexual pleasure beyond fixed normalizations, thus contributing to a sex-positive utopian future.

As society moves swiftly towards incorporating an increased number of social robots, the need for a deeper cultural understanding of companionship as a critical social aspect of human–robot connection is urgent. This cultural study examines how three of the most popular and publicly available sex robot marketing videos mobilise the meaning of companionship. Videos of \"Roxxxy\", “Harmony”, and “Emma” were examined employing a social semiotic discourse analysis based on a long history of identifying how advertisements tap into social and cultural ideals. Companionship is identified as: (i) enjoyed through attention, reliability, usefulness, support, trust, and kindness; (ii) including ideas of long-term commitment and endurance through the mundane, every day, and ordinary aspects of life; (iii) occurring where the meanings of connection for humans and robots are conflated even though they differ for humans and technology; and (iv) a vulnerability for both robot and human. Furthermore, the representations of robot companions remain limited to stereotypical concepts of women; viewers are positioned as desiring a product that claims agency but has none, and is marketed ‘as good as’ a human woman. In all, the representations are complex and far too simple—simple because this is an ideological model of companionship and complex because the ideas of technology are conflated with human–human ideals of companionship. Where technological design aspires towards a better future for humans, there is an urgency to move beyond the limited anthropomorphic cultural concepts presently aspired to in the design and marketing of companion robots.

Sex robots are likely to play an important role in shaping public understandings of sex and of relations between the sexes in the future. This paper contributes to the larger project of understanding how they will do so by examining the ethics of the “rape” of robots. I argue that the design of realistic female robots that could explicitly refuse consent to sex in order to facilitate rape fantasy would be unethical because sex with robots in these circumstances is a representation of the rape of a woman, which may increase the rate of rape, expresses disrespect for women, and demonstrates a significant character defect. Even when the intention is not to facilitate rape, the design of robots that can explicitly refuse consent is problematic due to the likelihood that some users will experiment with raping them. Designing robots that lack the capacity to explicitly refuse consent may be morally problematic depending on which of two accounts of the representational content of sex with realistic humanoid robots is correct.

Sexual activity with robots has been described as a masturbatory practice, so someone with sexual dysfunction, which may already lead to isolation, \"might become even more isolated by the illusion of having a substitute satisfaction\".8 Psychosexual therapists might use sexbots to assist couples with mismatched libido or to help treat erectile dysfunction,9 but potential adverse consequences, such as rejection of the non-interacting partner or threats to the integrity of the relationship, are underplayed. Countervailing risks have been expressed including commodifying human beings, normalising sexual deviancy, becoming ‘addictive’, acting as a practice ground for violence, and promoting the control of vulnerable individuals.11 While many sexbot users may distinguish between fact and fantasy, some buyers may not, leading to concern about potentially exacerbating the risk of sexual assault and rape of actual children and adults. In the USA, virtual child pornography is considered legally distinct from imagery involving real children.15 In the UK, it would not be illegal to own a child sexbot, although a man has been jailed for \"importing an obscene article\", a child sex doll.16 Forensic physicians working in Sexual Assault Referral Centres have been involved in police investigations of customs offences, providing age assessment of child sex dolls (size, age-related features, Tanner staging, hair, clothing) (L O’Connor, ME Vooijs, S Lewis, C White, K Shardlow, BP Butler, personal communications, 2017). The overwhelmingly predominant market for sexbots will be unrelated to healthcare. [...]the ‘health’ arguments made for their benefits, as with so many advertised products, are rather specious.

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps. First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human–robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human–robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility.

Sex dolls have been criticized for reproducing unrealistic expectations about human bodies. Yet precise sex doll measurements are lacking in the literature nor has there been any systematic attempt to determine the extent to which sex dolls exaggerate human characteristics. To address this gap, we compared the specifications of sex dolls marketed in the USA with the characteristics of women and men living in the USA. Specifically, we tested if and to what degree female dolls were slimmer (H1) and male dolls more muscular (H2) than female and male humans, respectively. Furthermore, we tested if and to what degree female dolls’ breasts (H3) and male dolls’ penises (H4) were larger than those of women and men. We also tested if sex dolls’ observed race/ethnicity was more often White than that of the US population (H5). In 2023, we collected the measures of all 757 full-body sex dolls marketed by the US retailer SexyRealSexDolls.com. Body measures from the US population were extracted from scientific literature. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed using R. All hypotheses were fully or partially confirmed, which indicated that sex dolls marketed in the USA are not realistic depictions of the US population but hypergendered (H1, H2), hypersexualized (H3, H4), and racially fetishized (H5). Implications of the lack of realism are discussed.

In his seminal book “Love and Sex with Robots”, David Levy (Love and sex with robots: the evolution of human–robot relations, Harper, New York, 2007 ) predicted that intimate human–robot relationships will be normalized by 2050. So far, only a very small number of early adopters of love and sex robots has experienced these kinds of relationships. The majority of the population only learns about love and sex with robots through media representations, be they fictional (e.g., movies and TV series) or non-fictional (e.g., newspaper and magazine articles). The current study therefore aimed at analyzing the media representations of intimate human–robot relationships. The three research questions, based on Sexual Script Theory, addressed characteristics (1) of the involved human partner, (2) of the involved robot partner, and (3) of their mutual intimate relationship. A quota sample of N  = 710 media examples from different genres (48% non-fictional, 52% fictional, originating from 1927 to 2014) was drawn and subjected to quantitative media content analysis. Results indicate that media representations of intimate human–robot relationships tend to portray the involved human partner as a man who is disadvantaged in interpersonal relationships. At the same time, media often portray the involved robot partner as a humanoid female sex robot. While non-fictional media describe intimate human–robot relationships more often in sexual terms, fictional media focus more on emotional aspects, cohabitation and even procreation between humans and robots. Overall, media representations of intimate human–robot relationships reveal stereotypical gender roles, heteronormativity and a focus on sexual versus emotional intimacy. Implications for the future development and use of love and sex robots are discussed.

Humanoid sex robots seem to challenge the human–machine distinction because one way to engage with them is to entertain the illusion that they are human and appropriate for intimacy. This inclination is intentionally induced by robot designers, and several narratives envision and claim that robots of the future will be indistinguishable from humans. Taking an anticipatory ethics approach and using critical discourse analysis, we argue that current discourse about sex robots does not adequately recognize the sociotechnical nature of humanoid sex robot development. We challenge the idea that the human–machine distinction will inevitably dissolve because of technological advancements. Recognition of the social influences on technological development is key to understanding the coherence, or lack thereof, of many narratives of the future that are currently put forward.