Tag: Sex Robots

Posted on

Registration Opens for LSR 2026

Registration for the 11th International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots (LSR 2026) is now open. Building on a conference series that began in 2011 and has helped establish the academic study of human-robot intimacy as an interdisciplinary field, LSR 2026 will take place on August 21–22 at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), with sessions hosted in the Pavillon J.A. DeSève in Montreal’s Latin Quarter. The conference is organized by Dr. Simon Dubé (Kinsey Institute, Indiana University Bloomington), Dr. David Levy, founder of the conference series, and Bobbi Bidochka (imagine ideation). The keynote speakers are Ellen M. Kaufman (Kinsey Institute, Indiana University Bloomington), Charlotte Poitras (multidisciplinary artist), and Valerie A. Lapointe (Université du Québec à Montréal), whose work spans informatics, psychology, media, and emerging technologies related to intimacy and AI. Further information on registration, the program, submissions, travel, and accommodation is available on the official conference website: www.lovewithrobots.com.

Posted on

Playboy Interview on Chatbots, Love Dolls, and Sex Robots

At the end of July 2025, Playboy interviewed Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel about relationships with chatbots, love dolls, and sex robots. The Playboy Special Edition was published in conjunction with the exhibition SEX NOW, which ran from September 5, 2025, to May 3, 2026. Beginning on September 11, 2025, the German magazine was available at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. It is visually stunning and delights readers with its playful and engaging language throughout. “Great Art in Playboy” presents “a small exhibition of significant visual artists and their works under the sign of the rabbit” (own translation). It features nude works ranging from Dalí to Warhol. “The Woman Without Taboos” is Beate Uhse, who, according to Playboy, “made the sexual revolution part of everyday life in Germany”. The magazine pays tribute to her with “an ode to an educator and businesswoman”. “Our Second-Best Friend” is the vibrator, whose cultural history is said to reveal “more about the relationship between the sexes than any sociology textbook”. A four-page feature includes a three-page interview with Oliver Bendel, a philosopher of technology based in Zurich. The interview was conducted by Christina Weiß. In the table of contents, it appears under the heading “Sex Devices”. The conversation explores sometimes exciting but always one-sided relationships with chatbots, love dolls, and sex robots. With the kind permission of Florian Boitin, Editor-in-Chief of Playboy Germany, the article has been available for download here since July 7, 2026.

Posted on

Queering Sex Robots

An article titled “Queering Sex Robots Beyond Diversifying Design? Insights from Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism” by Maaike van der Horst and Anna Puzio was published in the journal Philosophy & Technology in March 2026. Surprisingly, it does not reference several works that are highly relevant to the topic, including publications by Tanja Kubes and Oliver Bendel. As a result, some of the article’s claims to originality appear less convincing than they might otherwise have been. Following an exchange with one of the journal’s editors, Luciano Floridi, Oliver Bendel therefore submitted a commentary, which was published in Philosophy & Technology on June 10, 2026. From the abstract: “This commentary discusses Maaike van der Horst and Anna Puzio’s article ‘Queering Sex Robots Beyond Diversifying Design? Insights from Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism’. While acknowledging the article’s valuable contribution, particularly its integration of Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism, the commentary argues that its account of prior scholarship is incomplete. Several key themes and proposals presented as novel – including critiques of humanoid mimicry, new-materialist approaches to sexuality and technology, queer design concepts, relational ontology, and transformative sex robot forms – had already been developed in earlier work by Tanja Kubes and Oliver Bendel. The omission of these contributions affects assessments of originality, the reconstruction of the field’s intellectual development, and the allocation of scholarly credit. The commentary therefore calls for a more comprehensive scholarly genealogy of queer and new-materialist approaches to sex robots and argues that careful citation practices are essential to maintaining the integrity of academic discourse.” The article “Who Queered the Sex Robot? Notes on Attribution and Conceptual History” can be accessed at link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-026-01123-3 (Photo: Cybrothel).

Posted on

New Perspectives on Queering Sex Robots

A new article titled “Queering Sex Robots Beyond Diversifying Design? Insights from Queer Lacanian Psychoanalysis and New Materialism” (van der Horst & Puzio, 2026) has been published in Philosophy & Technology. The authors argue that queering sex robots should go beyond diversifying their physical design and instead involve a broader reconsideration of sexuality, identity, and human-technology relations. The paper starts from a critique widely discussed in the literature: current sex robot models largely reproduce heteronormative and stereotypical representations of femininity. Similar observations and related arguments can be found in earlier contributions in the volume “Maschinenliebe” (Bendel 2020). In that book, Tanja Kubes addresses the topic in her chapter “Queere Sexroboter”, while Oliver Bendel discusses transformations of gender and embodiment in “Trans-Formers”. Both contributions also refer to examples such as the Harmony robot from Realbotix/RealDollX. The main novelty of the new article lies in its theoretical framework, which combines Queer Lacanian psychoanalysis and New Materialism. Given the thematic overlap and the small number of publications on queer perspectives on sex robots, it is somewhat surprising that the earlier contributions in “Maschinenliebe” are not referenced. This book is predominantly written in German, but in times of large language models this should hardly pose a barrier. Moreover, the chapters by Kubes and Bendel have already been cited in several English-language academic publications (Photo: Cybrothel).

Posted on

SAGA: Sexuality and Generative AI

The upcoming “SAGA: Sexuality and Generative AI” symposium, taking place on April 30, 2026 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, explores how generative AI is reshaping intimacy, desire, relationships, and sexual expression. The presentation by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel begins with the Tamagotchi, the iconic digital pet that demonstrated how simple interactive systems can evoke emotional attachment. It then turns to social robots, wearable social robots, and AI-enhanced sex toys, love dolls, and sex robots. Today, large language models (LLMs) and multimodal language models (MLLMs) enable dialogue, perception, and evaluation in these systems. Such capabilities may also benefit people with disabilities, including blind users, by facilitating communication and interaction. At the same time, the physical dimension remains crucial. Embodied systems create presence and proximity: they can be touched, held, and stroked, and experienced through movement, vibration, or sound. The talk argues that future intimate technologies will emerge from the convergence of generative intelligence and physical embodiment, combining conversational AI with the sensory experience of a physically present companion. Full details and submissions are available at event.fourwaves.com/sexualiteia/pages.

Posted on

What We Can Do with Sex Robots

“Anthropomorphic love dolls – the successors of basic blowup dolls – are widely used these days, both in brothels and at home. While they can offer physical comfort and sexual satisfaction, they certainly cannot engage in more complex interactions with their counterparts. However, sex robots can – or at least they ought to. For now, the offer is not extensive and prices are high. The motor abilities of current models are limited and mainly focus on the head, while the body is usually identical to that of a love doll. Obviously, sex robots are made primarily to have sex with. But the user can also talk to and even form a relationship with them. This in mind, we are now starting to think about other applications of humanoid sex robots in the future – at least when their motor skills have improved. The possibilities might surprise you …” (De Gruyter Conversations, 23 April 2021) The full article is available via blog.degruyter.com/what-we-can-do-with-sex-robots-besides-the-obvious/ …

Posted on

Care Robots with New Functions

The symposium “Applied AI in Healthcare: Safety, Community, and the Environment” will be held within the AAAI Spring Symposia on March 22-23, 2021. One of the presentations is titled “Care Robots with Sexual Assistance Functions”. Author of the paper is Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. From the abstract: “Residents in retirement and nursing homes have sexual needs just like other people. However, the semi-public situation makes it difficult for them to satisfy these existential concerns. In addition, they may not be able to meet a suitable partner or find it difficult to have a relationship for mental or physical reasons. People who live or are cared for at home can also be affected by this problem. Perhaps they can host someone more easily and discreetly than the residents of a health facility, but some elderly and disabled people may be restricted in some ways. This article examines the opportunities and risks that arise with regard to care robots with sexual assistance functions. First of all, it deals with sexual well-being. Then it presents robotic systems ranging from sex robots to care robots. Finally, the focus is on care robots, with the author exploring technical and design issues. A brief ethical discussion completes the article. The result is that care robots with sexual assistance functions could be an enrichment of the everyday life of people in need of care, but that we also have to consider some technical, design and moral aspects.” More information about the AAAI Spring Symposia is available at aaai.org/Symposia/Spring/sss21.php.

Posted on

Intimate Relationships with Humanoid Robots

In October 2020 the book “Maschinenliebe” (ed. Oliver Bendel) was published by Springer. The title means “Machine Love”, “Machines for Love” or “Machines of Love”. Three contributions are in English. One of them (“Intimate Relationships with Humanoid Robots”) is by Yuefang Zhou and Martin H. Fischer (University of Potsdam). From the abstract: “The topic of human-robot intimate relationships is not only an intensely emotional one that is present in the mass media because of its ability to stir excitement. The very same topic also requires our understanding of basic mechanisms of the human mind and of social cognition in particular. A scientifically-minded framing of the debate around whether and how we might engage in intimate relationships with humanoid robots in the near future might in turn improve our understanding of human sexuality. Viewed from this angle, intimate human-robot interaction is then merely one of many examples of studying human-machine interactions for the benefit of users and as a means of improving our knowledge about humans and the human mind. In this chapter we will adopt such a stance and discuss both social-cognitive and sexual aspects of this innovative topic, review available empirical evidence and offer some suggestions for further research.” More information via www.springer.com/de/book/9783658298630.

Posted on

Love Dolls and Sex Robots in Prisons

On 24 October 2020 the article “Love Dolls and Sex Robots in Unproven and Unexplored Fields of Application” by Oliver Bendel was published in Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics. From the abstract: “Love dolls, the successors of blow-up dolls, are widespread. They can be ordered online or bought in sex shops and can be found in brothels and households. Sex robots are also on the rise. Research, however, has been slow to address this topic thoroughly. Often, it does not differentiate between users and areas of application, remaining vague, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The present contribution deals with the idea and history of love dolls and sex robots. Against this background, it identifies areas of application that have not been investigated or have hardly been investigated at all. These include prisons, the military, monasteries and seminaries, science, art and design as well as the gamer scene. There is, at least, some relevant research about the application of these artefacts in nursing and retirement homes and as such, these will be given priority. The use of love dolls and sex robots in all these fields is outlined, special features are discussed, and initial ethical, legal and pragmatic considerations are made. It becomes clear that artificial love servants can create added value, but that their use must be carefully considered and prepared. In some cases, their use may even be counterproductive.” The article is available here for free as an open access publication.

Posted on

Talking to Harmony

At the end of June 2020, DIE WELT conducted an interview with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel about sex robots and love dolls. It was especially about their natural language skills. Particularly owners and users who want to have a relationship are interested in conversations of all kinds, about God and the world and in the sense of “dirty talk”. Companies like Realbotix go very far in this respect. Harmony for example can talk to her partners for hours in a quite convincing way. The engineers experiment with GPT-2, but also with other language models. Kino Coursey, AI boss of Realbotix, deals with this topic in his article “Speaking with Harmony” for the book “Maschinenliebe” (“Machine Love”) which will be released in October. The interview with Oliver Bendel was published on 11 July 2020 in the printed edition of DIE WELT, under the title “Intelligente Sexroboter sind begehrte Gesprächspartner” (already published the day before in the electronic edition, under the title “Was Sexpuppen können” …). In addition, an English version – “Intelligent sex robots are sought-after dialogue partners” – is available.