Is Robot-Human Sex And Marriage Real? Future With Interactive Toys Is 'Just Around The Corner'

Robots that can have sex with humans may be on the market as soon as 2017 — at least that’s what Abyss Creations developers are hoping to achieve in the New Year. During the second Love and Sex with Robots conference, which started Monday, researchers from the California sex toy company said they would release an artificial intelligence-enhanced sex doll.

The doll, which would be a part of the company’s RealDoll line, would be the most human-like sex-dolls to hit the market, capable of talking and moving like humans.

"Sex with robots is just around the corner, with the first sexbots coming ... sometime next year," Dr. David Levy, an artificial intelligence expert who has long predicted the coming of robots capable of sexual relationships, said during closing remarks at the conference.

During the weeklong conference held at Goldsmith University in London, a slew of companies debuted the latest developments in robotic sex toys, including one called the “Kissenger,” which would allow people to send and feel kisses through a device that attaches to mobile phones. Another object introduced at the event called the Teletongue, which is being developed by students at Tokyo’s Keio University, will provide “remote oral interaction,” allowing couples to send licking sounds and sensations through cyberspace in a “kinky” new way, toy co-creator Dolhathai Kaewsermwong explained to Phys.org.

Should Abyss Creations manage to successfully create a RealDoll sex robot in 2017, robots capable of marriage and companionship will most likely be next to come, according to Levy, who suggested people will be able to marry sex robots by 2050.

"We have companion robots and a partner robot is the logical continuation of the trend," he said. "In the next 10 years, it is perfectly achievable in software to create a robot companion that is everything that people might want in a spouse — patient, kind, loving, trusting, respectful and uncomplaining.”

Not everyone shares in Levy’s excitement for robots capable of providing sex and marriage. Back in November when Abyss Creations first announced the company was looking to add animatronics to sex dolls, Kathleen Richardson, senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at De Montfort University who started the Campaign Against Sex Robots, told ABC’s "Lateline" sex robots were “dehumanizing and isolating.”

"I want people to stop thinking about the word 'robot' and think about the word 'property,' and what we're being encouraged to do is have relationships with property," she said. "While we live in a world which still considers women as property, then it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to start creating property that looks like women and then encouraging people to have the same sort of relationships."