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There have been numerous films and books over the years about humans befriending and even falling in love with AI, as well as a lot of talk about robots stealing your job.
While many can’t imagine a real world where they’d be comfortable with being unable to distinguish the difference between a real person and a robot, that hasn’t stopped the technology world continuing on its quest to make cyborgs as life like as possible.
Rather than just feeling comfortable in a robot’s presence, a new tech company, Erotic Chatbots, believes we’re not far off the point were we’d feel comfortable asking for a mechanical hand in marriage.
The artificial intelligence startup has just launched a campaign on Indiegogo and is hoping to bring its chatbots to shy, amorous and tech obsessed people around the globe.
“If you already behave like ‘Pavlov’s Dog’ every time your smart device pings or vibrates, you might already be more than a little bit ‘in love’ with a robot or ‘bot’. It is not beyond the bounds of our senses that you might already be harbouring a massive ‘crush’ on your personal technology,” says the firm.
“In the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. Taking that intimacy to another level, and ‘making’ or ‘attracting’ an intelligent virtual-lover or partner which understands and wants to please you, is perhaps an appealing proposition to a lot of people.”
If you are one of those people, well lucky you, Erotic Chatbots is developing a new collection of virtual chat partners, virtual-lovers or friends.
“They will be able to chat, flirt or hang out with you whenever, wherever you want and for as long as you wish. Some of our adult chatbots will be programmed for making sexy conversations,” explains the company.
Erotic Chatbots’ technology is backed and developed by Dr David Levy, president of the International Computer Games Association. Levy has a track record in AI research and development, having twice won the Loebner Prize for human-computer conversation. He is also the author of Love and Sex with Robots and earned his PhD for a thesis on the same subject.
The new company plans to launch apps and interactive services that “conduct entertaining, interesting, erotically charged conversations with virtual lovers or friends,” says Levy. “Anyone who finds it too tame to chat to the company’s flirty style of chatbot can amuse themselves with adult chatbots, which can also help users to improve their own talk-dirty skills.”
As well as trying to decided whether this is something you’re ‘in to’, it may be worth considering what options this sector of the tech industry brings to resellers. If projects such as Erotic Chatbots’ get off the ground, we can be sure to see more and more tech emerge in this market.
Just like in our recent analysis piece on how drones could be your new revenue stream, perhaps there are alternative businesses to the usual office environments that you work with who may be interested in having lifelike AI to talk to.
Whether it’s friendly robots for kids and families to interact with on holidays, at adventure parks and in schools; flirty robots for cripplingly shy people at support groups; or a bit of adult fun at bars, clubs and events, this is certainly an interesting market to keep an eye on.
