Sex Robot Brothels

Sex Robot Brothels

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July 7, 2017 / 12:17 PM
/ CNET

From delivery drones to automated cars, robots are on the rise -- and that includes bots you can have sex with, thanks to the growing number of companies working to bring artificially intelligent sex dolls to the masses.
The Foundation for Responsible Robotics, which calls for "accountable innovation for the humans behind the robots," sees sexualized robots creeping up on the horizon, so it put together a comprehensive report on the subject . It's a fascinating read, covering evolving societal attitudes, ethical implications and sociological concerns.
The entire report's worth a look, but here are seven key takeaways.
The report cites a number of studies on whether people would have sex with a robot, and points to a wide range of responses. For instance, 9 percent of respondents to a Huffington Post survey expressed interest in the idea; another survey found 66 percent of men and about half as many women would want to give sexbots a go. Still another poll found that 86 percent of respondents believed a robot would be able to satisfy their sexual desires, suggesting potential for the market to grow as attitudes toward sex robots evolve.
Our robotics system will be compatible with any RealDoll. Which one of these lovely ladies would you like to see brought to life? pic.twitter.com/WoHOJx3NUF
The report also examines what future relationships with sex robots might look like, and draws comparisons to professional sex workers, many of whom say, according to the report, that high-paying clients often want to drink, socialize and do drugs together to form the pretense of a relationship in addition to having sex.
While the technology needed to make sex robots into drinking buddies is likely a long way off, the report points to men who say they've formed emotional connections with inanimate dolls. These sorts of "fictive relationships" are a little like imaginative play, the report says, and social acceptance of these kinds of relationships will be needed for more people to feel comfortable entering into them.
In another of the many surveys cited in the report, respondents were asked if sex robots were an acceptable substitute for prostitutes. On a scale of one to seven, with one being unacceptable and seven being acceptable, the survey results averaged out to a perhaps surprisingly high six. This, coupled with the fact that bordellos of inanimate sex dolls are already on the rise in Asia, leads the authors of the report to conclude that sex robot brothels might be a logical next step.
The report points out that there's no question creating humanoid sex robots based on pornographic representations of female anatomy objectifies women. Still, it asserts much of sexual societies already feed off of that sort of objectification, and goes on to suggest sex robots could ultimately serve more to reinforce existing mindsets than to create new ones. There's not a lot of research here, though, especially with regard to under-represented communities.
The authors of the report and the scholars they cite are fairly unified in the belief that the advent of sex robots could lead to greater social isolation. One big factor: Sex robots are easy to have sex with, and people who use them could be put off by the additional communication and social interaction that goes into a traditional sexual experience. They also express concern that sex robots could desensitize users to intimacy and empathy.
The report goes on to discuss the potential therapeutic value of sex robots for people with social disorders or physical disabilities or even the elderly. There's some history to draw from here -- namely nursing homes that use semi-robotic dolls to provide companionship for their residents, including patients suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Still, there are ethical questions with regard to dolls like these, even before you bring sex into picture. Some authors argue they infantilize the elderly, and others question whether those suffering from mental disabilities can truly provide informed consent.
The report cites controversial suggestions that sex robots could ultimately be used to stem the rise of sexual assault, rape and pedophilia by providing people predisposed to those acts with a non-human outlet. In addition to questioning the legality of such dolls (specifically those that depict children), the report's authors express skepticism about the proposed benefits, and even question whether they could actually encourage harmful behavior.

First published on July 7, 2017 / 12:17 PM

© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright ©2022 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

Florian Martin | Posted on October 17, 2018, 11:48 AM (Last Updated: October 17, 2018, 5:32 PM )
Toronto-based KinkySDolls sells sex dolls similar to this one. They can talk and move body parts. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons )
Religious group Elijah Rising collected more than 13,000 signatures in opposition to the planned "robot brothel." (Photo Credit: Change.org)
David Gamboa with Elijah Rising says sex with "robot prostitutes" could lead men to try a real sex worker. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)
UH philosophy professor Tamler Sommers thinks Houston's opposition to a "robot brothel" has more to do with reputation than fear of human trafficking. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)
Attorney Jed Silverman specializes in sexually oriented businesses. He believes we haven't seen the last of sex robot businesses in Houston. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)
Anti-prostitution group Elijah Rising turned a former massage parlor into a museum to showcase the effects of human trafficking. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)
The offices of Elijah Rising are in a former underground brothel along the Southwest Freeway. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)
The offices of Elijah Rising are in a former underground brothel along the Southwest Freeway. (Photo Credit: Florian Martin)

The Houston City Council effectively banned a planned store that would let customers try out life-like sex dolls on site, but can Houston stop this kind of business permanently?
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If you've followed our news coverage the past few weeks, you have heard about robot brothels.
In fact, it made national news, including on ABC's The View :
"Religious groups in Houston are protesting the opening of a brothel featuring sex robots," co-host Whoopi Goldberg announced to laughter from the audience. And she added: "Why're they worried about it?"
While Goldberg and others on the show laughed it off, the matter is serious for some here in Houston.
Mayor Sylvester Turner moved swiftly and presented an ordinance to City Council that expands the meaning of adult arcades to include "anthropomorphic devices" – in other words, humanlike sex dolls or... robots.
It passed unanimously , and some of the public comments before the vote at City Hall are telling about how the community feels – at least openly.
"A business like this would continue to open up doors for sexual desires and cause confusion and destruction to our younger generation," said Richard Vega, pastor at At His Feet Ministries.
"As a woman, I am concerned and horrified to see where our society is taking us," Virginia Morales said.
And Tex Christopher quoted the Bible: "In Ephesians 5:31, it says that a man shall leave this father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and they shall become one. It doesn't say that a man shall leave his mother and father and go and join a robot."
The Harris County Commissioners Court also addressed the issue .
Leading the charge against KinkySDolls , the company that wants to open the sex doll business in Houston, is Elijah Rising .
They started an online petition demanding the city stop the business and collected more than 13,000 signatures.
To learn more about their effort, I visited Elijah Rising's offices along the Southwest Freeway.
They have a little exhibition, which they call the "Museum of Modern-Day Slavery." In one part of the building, they recreated a room of a brothel they found. It has a single, dirty mattress, a bedside table and a chair with condoms and KY on it. The floor is dirty with empty beer bottles and dead cockroaches.
"Girls were crammed into these little rooms," Elijah Rising spokesman David Gamboa said. "This place had women as well as young girls."
The Elijah Rising building itself is a former illicit massage parlor.
"We still have guys show up today thinking we're a massage parlor and so they'll come in asking us for women," Gamboa said. "And we usually bring them back to the museum and we educate them, and a lot of times they just kind of run out the door."
But here’s the thing: There’s one argument that says robot prostitutes might actually lower the demand for human sex workers .
"At the end of the day, I don't think they are going to always choose that over a woman," he said. "I think it's going to be an entry point for men who might be interested in purchasing sex."
That theory is also held by some researchers, most prominently British professor of ethics and culture of robots Kathleen Richardson. She founded the organization " Campaign Against Sex Robots " and wrote a paper , which is also referenced in the Change.org petition.
But in the case of the Houston robot brothel, is it really about sex trafficking?
"That seems to me to be not really the reason people are against it," Tamler Sommers, a philosophy professor at the University of Houston, said.
He often talks about human sexuality and morality in his twice-monthly podcast and will discuss sex robots in an upcoming episode.
Sommers said there just aren't any empirical studies to prove a connection between robot brothels and real prostitution.
"So I think what people are really concerned with is, what does it say about our city?" he said. "What does it say about our city that we would be the first city to open a sex robot brothel?"
He points to comments like this by Mayor Turner and city council members:
"(I’m) certainly trying to encourage businesses but this is not the sort of business I'm seeking to attract." (Turner)
"This type of enterprise degrades our city." ( Greg Travis )
"We don't want to be known worldwide for these things. We don't want these things happening here." ( Brenda Stardig )
With the updated ordinance, a company cannot let customers have sex with dolls or robots on site. It can still have a showroom and sell their products, but that's about it – at least legally.
KinkySDolls, the sex robot company, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But its CEO Yuval Gavriel told the British tabloid Daily Mirror they are looking at legal options.
Jed Silverman , a Houston attorney who specializes in sexually oriented businesses, doesn't think this issue will go away.
"I would suspect that they're going to continue to try to fight against this," he said. The future will let us know what's going to happen. But if there's money to be made at doing this, I suspect the fight is far from over."
He said even if sex robot companies lose the legal fight, there's still a chance they could try to simply go around the new regulations.
Just like with adult video booths, which still exist in Houston, spending time with a device in the back of the store is not illegal – but it is if the customer engages in sexual activity. And the operator could deny knowledge of that.
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Posted on February 15, 2021 · On Monday's show: How freezing temperatures are affecting the region, and a new program provides trauma counseling for victims of sex trafficking.
Posted on January 11, 2021 · The public artworks are designed to inspire change and empower victims to reach out for help.
Posted on November 2, 2020 · On Monday's show: A last-minute check in with election administrators, the long-term effects of job and housing discrimination, a sleep doctor answers your questions, and addressing an issue likely to arise if Houston hosts the World Cup.
Posted on January 30, 2020 · "Eighty-three cases of human trafficking have already occurred in my precinct this year."
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The future is a weird place. And as anxiety-producing fiction like Blade Runner, Westworld (the HBO show or the Yul Brynner original), and Black Mirror has shown us, it’s because of technology. If you’re not a sci-fi person, though, you may be unprepared for a reality that will soon be descending upon us, signified by three little words: Sex robot brothel.
Last month, Toronto-based company KinkySdollS announced that—following a successful launch in Canada’s most populous city—it would be expanding to the U.S. Specifically, the location of its first American sex robot brothel would be Houston. You have questions, we’re sure. We have (some) answers.
First, just take a moment and consider if you really want this information in your head before you proceed. Once you learn something, you can’t un-learn it. Are you certain that you want to know?
OK, here we go: A sex robot brothel is a place where people go to interact with sex toys that look like women and have parts that simulate the sexual characteristics one would associate with women. And this isn’t just a Fleshlight. They are fairly sophisticated—the people who make the robots claim that they’re so convincing, people are capable of falling in love with them.
They have some degree of AI, using the same basic voice recognition technology that’s in your phone or an Alexa device, and the advanced models can make facial expressions to react to the things a person says to them. The field of teledildonics (which we swear to gosh is a real term and not something we just made up) is rapidly expanding its technological capacity too. The devices, which are covered in silicone, are built with heaters that can simulate body warmth, and newer models can be “seduced,” requiring stimulation to the parts you would probably expect in order to activate.
So that’s what a sex robot is. They’re in the vanguard of sex technology— a $30 billion a year industry —and they’re expected to become more common in the years to come . A sex robot brothel, meanwhile, is a facility in which there are a lot of these things, and people can pay a fee to, er, interact with them in a short-term, private, on-site rental. It’s like a video arcade, but for sex robots.
Ehhhhh. We’ll go with “it’s not illegal .” Perhaps unsurprisingly, many civic leaders are not especially excited about being the home of a sex robot brothel! “This is not the kind of business I would like to see in Houston, and certainly this is not the kind of business the city is seeking to attract,” Mayor Sylvester Turner told the Houston Chronicle . In Italy, a robot sex brothel that opened in September lasted only two weeks before it was shut down by police . The business model is more widespread in Europe, with locations in cities as far-flung as Barcelona and Moscow .
Currently, Houston is trying to slow down the construction of the KinkySdollS business through the permitting process, requiring the company to submit a demolition permit at the location at which it intends to build, and be approved by the city. The city may attempt to pass an ordinance that would restrict such businesses, but at the moment, there’s no such law in place. Texas law explicitly bans prostitution, but the ordinance in question requires two parties (even if one isn’t human) to engage in sexual behavior together for money. In Texas—and every other state except for Alabama, which bans sex toys—there’s no state ban that would prevent people from going into a private room to, um, enjoy themselves with whatever devices happen to be lying around.
(Update: Shortly after this story published, the Houston City Council voted to ban sex robot brothels within city limits.)
Uh. It depends. If the patrons all use condoms, then the risk of sexually transmitted diseases is probably low. Stacey Townsend, CEO of Real Love Sex Dolls, the Austin-based company that leads the industry in human-shaped sex toys, told the Houston Chronicle that the devices are meant to be used by one person, and one person only—though her business model does involve selling, and not renting, the devices. They “cannot be completely sterilized after use,” she told the paper.
The location in Toronto charges $80 for thirty minutes, or $120 for a full hour, according to Vice . (A deluxe package involving two dolls for four hours will run $960.) Guests who are so smitten with the experience that they want to re-create it at home can purchase the devices from the company starting at around $4,000.
A lot of people do! Some people think that they’re misogynistic wish fulfillment devices . Others believe that they’ll lead to the end of human relationships as we know them. Both Christian and Islamic leaders have condemned the use of the devices, saying that they go against God’s plan. Living, breathing sex workers consider them dehumanizing and dangerous to people in their line of work.
Reducing sexual interactions to the parts that get rubbed together is probably not great for us, if it becomes widespread in the way that futurists fear it might. The companies behind these devices are confident that they’re doing something good for the world—easing loneliness, providing comfort, offering an outlet for certain fantasies that are unacceptable to enact with another human being—but providing men with the simulacrum of an actual willing partner in which consent is entirely removed from the equation is probably not the absolute healthiest thing for a society. There are theorists who’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this— and it’s not all doom and gloom —but if you’re feeling squicked out by it, you’re not alone.

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