Paranormal Romantics: RealDoll - The Future of Love & Romance?

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

RealDoll - The Future of Love & Romance?

RealDoll is a talking, emoting(?) human-size, life-like sex toy. They are pretty amazing.

I first saw the RealDolls on a Facebook post and had to learn more…like if they made male models. I dropped that idea like a lava rock when I found out the price is a modest $10,000. Not this week.

Abyss Creations is making Love For Sale—very reminiscent of my book of the same name. Love For Sale was published in 2015, but the story goes way back to the 90s. It began as a short story, won an award, and I thought ‘why not a novel?’

I digress.

One of the dolls, the one shown in the ads, is named Harmony. A columnist from the Engadget visited Abyss’ facility and met Harmony. He said, “Harmony’s eyes are a window to an uncertain future.”

I am intrigued by AI used as loving companions—not so much as pleasure bots, but the RealDolls have their place. There are a lot of lonely people, for one reason or another. Some are just not socially adept. Some are deformed or consider themselves unattractive and unable to find a companion. Coming home to their doll may be a bit weird, but it’s better than coming home alone, if you crave company.

"A lot of the people who buy the dolls can be shy or socially intimidated by real social situations," McMullen of Abyss says. "And so, they get the dolls and a lot of times it — it does something magical for them. You know, it gives them a feeling of not being alone, not being a loner. And so, it's the companionship that I think, more than anything else, appeals to those people in particular."

“Harmony can hold a conversation, but she's far from a perfect. When McMullen gave me a spin with a beta version of Harmony AI, I ramped up a series of random personality traits to their highest levels, including "annoying," "sexual" and "insecure." It's like a scene out of West World, but Harmony is no Maeve Millay.” Quoting the Engadget article called ‘Computer Love’.

Guile Lindroth is the Brazilian AI engineer and the brains behind Harmony's brain. He has worked for more than 15 years on the project. He manually programs her knowledge base. This permits him to control the conversation without having to access too much of a end user's data.

The term – the Uncanny Valley—was coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in a 1970 paper about human reactions to lifelike robots and describes that eerie feeling one gets when encountering an artificial human that comes close to but doesn't quite measure up to "being human".

Sex bot aside, if you met Harmony, would you find her creepy? I asked this question on another post about human-like robots earlier talking about the Japanese models. I’m very interested because of Love For Sale, which is about sentient, human-like androids built to sell as companions, but in the end that was not their purpose.