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  • Steven McTowelie@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Sex with a hella sexy robot? Nice.

    Using a hella sexy robot to fill the emptiness of no intimacy or authentic mutual connection? Not nice.

    For some reason sex with a robot doesn’t feel gross to me — until they start using it to fill a hole (hehe)

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      What about for people who struggle to have emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy throughout their lives because of medical issues or mental health issues?

      My ex has a brother who is now pushing 40 and has never even held a woman’s hand. He has severe mental disabilities and will never live life on his own without some kind of caretaker. We know he looked at porn, partially because he refused to ever let people fix up his computer, usually out of fear of people seeing his porn.

      Does he not deserve emotional and sexual intimacy? There is a high likelihood he will never have it otherwise.

      until they start using it to fill a hole

      What about, like in the situation I just described, when that hole will otherwise go a lifetime of being unfulfilled? Is that fair to them for being born a way they didn’t choose?

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Different filler for different holes.

        A sex bot is fine if you keep expectations in check. For the rest, friendship can go a long way. Help them find a hobby they can share with others (regardless of gender) and keep that platonic. That gives them social connection, and the sex bot gives physical release.

        It’s not as good as a complete relationship, but at least there’s less risk of the sex bot creating more problems by trying to have it do human things.

        • Jarix@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          That’s exactly the wrong take.

          Provide something that isn’t what they need in order to fill a need they have.

          That’s like giving someone drugs instead to masque symptoms of working in the problem and addressing it.

          But that’s not right either. If providing sexual encounters was real and done appropriately then there this situation might still exists. If it’s the physical space and intimacy that are triggering, then a robot is a very good choice if it provides some of the missing human experiences that missing out on when desired make for more broken people

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            What they need is emotional intimacy, but they can’t get that because of crippling anxiety. You’re not going to get emotional intimacy from a robot, and if you try, you run the very real risk of really adverse effects, like this or this.

            That’s why I suggested separating concerns. Keep the bot physical, and encourage real personal relationships in a low risk environment. There’s always a chance a personal relationship develops into something more, whereas there’s a lot of risk expecting a bot to fill that gap.

  • essteeyou@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Realistically how is a man going to design a good sex robot for a woman? Let a woman do that, they’ll get what they want.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        And if that Sybian could pick you up, and stroke your thighs, massage your breasts, have hips and legs to simulate the sexual positions that it can’t provide you, while still being what it is, there is a huge room for improvement on the design of the sybian and what great things it does

          • Jarix@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Probably a group of engineers so maybe not all men, Sybian is just like the penultimate vibrator, would be a fun engineering challenge, but it’s also a marketable challenge which would be why it exists

              • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                In this case penultimate is used to describe something that is nearly perfect. As if to say, there is little room for improvement.

              • Jarix@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Sybian doesn’t do everything it could do, so i didn’t want to call it the ultimate. But it does not seem to have any contenders that aren’t knock offs so it does feel like a Pinnacle as a vibrator if not as a sex toy

                I wanted to show for what comes next. Maybe I’m wrong and there isn’t, but a sybian that can view your reactions and learn each users unique preferences would be an improvement

                A sybian as the hips of a sex robot maybe? Like its fine, but its just a box , you get on to get off and then it is done with you. Theres no after care or anything else.

                I guess a portable discreet version will require entirely new components that we probably cant manufacture yet, or are cost prohibited.

                I dunno what the ultimate is, so penultimate seems a good choice to use if i can see improvements to it that dont yet exist

          • shalafi@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            …in the early 1980s, he teamed up with a female physician who believed in the idea. They spent the next 18 months gathering research, asking for insights and meeting with engineers who could bring the product to life.

            From inception to prototyping to how the Sybian performs today wasn’t a “one and done” process. Years of research, conducting interviews and refinement went into its creation. As the creator himself says, “Sybian is not the result of what I thought it should be, but the collective input of many women.”

            You can’t seriously think the ultimate female orgasm machine was invented without women? Plenty of videos that will back me on the “ultimate” part!

            • leftover@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              My comment was totally unencumbered by facts or data.

              But it’s not that too far fetched to think it could have been created by a man. For example, in the entire compendium of research around womens health, some not insignificant number of studies around things like menopause, thyroid insufficiency, and aging are not woman specific , and in many of the studies do not include women at all. And we base our medical approach to women on this research.

              Women are constantly systematically overlooked and left out.

              It’s not to far for me to think that some horney engineer made it.

              In this case it’s fun to be wrong , as you have pointed out.

        • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
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          3 months ago

          In EU with their GDPR/cookie laws. I’m pretty sure hiding the declining of tracking or cookies behind a paywall is not supported under those laws.

          • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            It is very legal and common in France too. You’re free to decline as long as you’re a customer. You’re free to accept or not see the web site.

            • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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              3 months ago

              We need search engines that hide those from results by default. Basically “walled garden-blocking”.

              They want to keep the door shut until you surrender your data? Fine. They don’t get to pollute your web if you refuse then.

          • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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            3 months ago

            I wish. In the end it all depend on how individual countries interpret the EU law. In France it was decided that “either let us shit all over your privacy or pay a subscription” was okay and in the spirit of the law.

            It’s bullshit IMO, but lots of sites ran with it. So those I refuse to interact with now.

          • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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            3 months ago

            This is very common in the EU. The majority of news sites do it. I believe it’s technically legal because they aren’t under obligation to provide a free access at all

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        Think I’ve seen this twice now in the past couple years, but yeah it’s likely not compliant with the cookie law in EU

        • hubobes@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          This is perfectly legal, the law only says that the user must freely choose to allow the website to save said data. You can opt out here and not use that website.

    • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Idk what’s the big deal, honestly. Remember the memes about yt premium, “I either give you my money, or my data, but not both”? Well, it’s kinda like that. The caveat is, their payment provider likely still collects data, and some info is saved on the backend anyways, but that’s another can of worms.

      • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        Asshole design is asshole design. They’re essentially saying here that they’ll sell your data whatever you choose, opting out is not an option.

        Obviously there’s easy ways to bypass this but it’s not an excuse for them

        Edit: also, their “cookie (and data sharing ) policy”:

        Clicking on “accept cookies” you’re agreeing WAY more than implied

        • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          To me it looks more like they’re saying they’ll monetize their work no matter what, tho. One way is through direct payments by those who consider their articles worth paying for, then they don’t need to sell userdata or show ads; the other way is selling userdata. Well, there’s also non-targeted advertising, but mb it doesn’t worth as much or something (and targeted ads already pay close to nothing from a single viewer, afaik).

          Where I personally draw the line is when such subscriptions still include ads (looking at you, “ad-free” disney+) or have unnecessarily large costs and so on. I mean, if they charge close to what they’re making with ads and selling data, we could get most websites ~tracker-free for probably a couple of bucks a month each. This, in turn, lessens the power of ad network owners, which again makes the web better. Although, mb I’m idealizing too much, idk.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      It’s a favorite campy classic of mine. I love bad movies.

      I also think it’s one of those films with a great idea but terrible execution that could be remade.

      I want to see a remake where Cherry 2000 actually has agency and consciousness and at the end of the film the two women run away together leaving the creepy guy behind.

      I always thought a remake could have Chris Elliott as the creepy guy and he would kill it in such a role.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I’m surprised i haven’t seen anyone talk about another movie, AI

        One of the main characters is Gigolo Joe played by judge law

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 months ago

          Probably because it wasn’t super well received by audiences and kind of got forgotten by a lot of folks.

          It only holds a 64% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s definitely not hated but it’s not a deeply well liked film.

          I certainly had forgotten about Jude Law as Gigolo Joe.

          • Jarix@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It wasn’t well received because of the changes Spielberg finishing it had on the project.

            There’s like 3 or 4 points where the movie should never ended but Spielberg doesn’t do those types of movies

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 months ago

    I guess a vibrator isn’t a type of sex robot?

    Just saying that these sort of toys were way more normalized for women long before they were for men.

    A man with a fleshlight was a gross weirdo, a woman with a vibrator is a strong independent woman taking control of her sexuality and not settling for the weakness of flesh in men.

      • Dr. Bob@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Dildos have been around a lot longer than that. https://allthatsinteresting.com/history-of-the-dildo

        My understanding is that “hysteria” legitimized the use of the vibrator (not unlike how “weight loss” was used in the 1980s to prescribe fentanyl), but they were around before that, and probably would have found another way of entering the mainstream.

          • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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            3 months ago

            hollowed out wooden dildos

            I don’t think the Cage likes being referred to so blandly…

            spoiler

    • python@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Colloquially, the word “robot” always implies a certain amount of anthropomorphism. So no, I don’t think a vibrator would count, as basically no vibrators on the market try to look human-like.

      But that definitely is a weird difference between male and female sexuality - the sex toys women buy most are the very effective and utilitarian ones: Vibrator wands, Rabbits, Air pulse Vibrators etc.

      While the most popular tools for men tend to focus on “realism”(?): Fleshlights, Sex Dolls, things like VR and POV porn. And I guess sex robots would fall into that category too in the future.

      I can absolutely see the weirdness-factor of someone who is desperately trying to emulate a partner rather than just accept masturbation as a solo activity and optimize it from there 😬

      • LaggyKar@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        A robot doesn’t need to be anthropomorphic, an assembly line robot is still a robot. It does however need to be able to perform some actions autonomously, for which a vibrator hardly qualifies.

        • Ageroth@reddthat.com
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          3 months ago

          An assembly line robot (like welding or material handling, I’ve worked with ABB, Fanuc, Motoman, Panasonic) are still called robot “arms” with the end portion often called the “wrist” so there is a degree of anthropomorphizing even if it’s not the whole body. And they do resemble an arm, however with 6 axis motion the motion is more like from your hips to your wrist than shoulder to wrist.

          • fl42v@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            Iirc, traffic lights are called robots in some African English dialects. Although it’s more like one of those regional peculiarities.

        • Arkouda@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          It does however need to be able to perform some actions autonomously, for which a vibrator hardly qualifies.

          Fuck Machine has entered the chat

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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        3 months ago

        https://duckduckgo.com/?q=robot+vacuum&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images

        Ah yes, the extremely humanlike robots. 😂

        I think one difference is that men often have no support structures at all, and certainly not with levels of physical or emotional connection. They aren’t just craving sex, they are craving human intimacy and connection where it is very normalized in the west among women to have emotional and physical platonic intimacy among friend support groups.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Overpriced pornstar-branded fleshlights aren’t the only masturbators in town and it’s not like there’s no life-like dildos either. The long and short of it is that the mechanics of a lubed hole are superior to that of a hand and you’re not looking at the entry point all the time so noone actually cares what they look like.

        Yes, the branded stuff does exist, humans, male female, doesn’t matter, enter parasocial relationships news at 11. Can you imagine how well Justin Bieber dildos would sell.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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      3 months ago

      This was my thought. Its the same way all our technology has grown. Honestly I think brain interfaces could eclipse robots like this before they are that great. As scary as that is.

  • flemtone@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    In this current age of western dating Sex Bots at least cut out all of the bullshit for many men and give you basic companionship with the perks of sex, which is a lot easier for some than dating.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Maybe some men like the idea, but I bet most of them would soon find the experience less fulfilling than they had hoped.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Former sex worker - what’s the appeal?

      It’s basically impossible to do full service work without being severely traumatized. I guess I don’t have to pay for sex since I like men - no matter what age sex gender race what the fuck ever there’s a guy within 10 miles that’ll stick their dick in you - but I guess I don’t see the appeal of sex that my partner isn’t enjoying.

      • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        “what’s the appeal?”

        Of a sex worker or a robot?

        basically it boils down to skin-on-skin human contact versus a toy in this case. Did you never ask a client/partner/audience member? I assume reasons may vary. -I personally think the nature of the (business) relationship to be low-pressure and relatively straight-forward. -That is if we are to contrast it with the dating experience for the average man. Not everybody is relationship material, regardless.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I guess, it’s something that I have extremely complicated feelings about and severe trauma associated with. “Roses” on CL were kinda essential at a point in my life, and I’ve wondered what the other party got out of it.

          Idk - like tons of men will “stealth” you. Or they’ll pressure you into not wearing condoms when they know you’re desperate.

          Maybe this is trauma dumping I’d like to be retroactively humanized by a “john” a bit. But I’m just not sure how common it is not to be ultimately traumatized at the other end of things. This is not to be a “SWERF” - but what’s the difference between a human and one of these robots?

          Edit: maybe a story more aligned to positive feelings towards “Johns” - the older man who saw that my tires were deflated and brought out a pump to fix it. He liked a thing I don’t but isn’t abnormal. Tolerable but not “enjoyable.”

          The others are hard to balance it out against. Perhaps a consequence of not having a “Nordic model” or legalization. But also the kind of thing that often make it hard to think rationally. This is why I’m deeply empathic to Dworkin.

          • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            I didn’t want to make assumptions on your initial comment as i didn’t know if you were referring to yourself as a full-service sex worker or were using the term under the more general definition applied to strippers, adult film stars, and cam-models, etc. I’ve never hired a hooker, before but visiting Pahrump Nevada, or the red light district of the Netherlands is still on my bucket list.

            -That said, having your own personal choice and control over the situation taken away either by guys trying to “stealth” you or to take advantage of a desperate situations at the potential expense of your health is an awful thing to do to someone else. I can only speculate as to what each of your clients wanted that they couldn’t get from a toy. If i’m asked to return to your earlier question of what’s the difference between a human sex worker and a robot, I guess I’d respond by asking what’s the difference between non-sex worker and a robot?

            While the work may not be 1:1 to you I can say with regards to strippers there’s still a kind of nonemotional intimacy, and the workers get to express their personalities which made things fun. I don’t know if you got a chance to do any of that or not.

            –Are you able to seek counseling for this? Regardless of what I’ve said, that’s some pretty heavy trauma you seem to be trying to make sense of. It could be beneficial to work through it with someone that has more formal training and a deeper knowledge for learning how to cope with these kind of things.

            • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              I guess, desire needs to be reciprocal for me.

              I later found a lot of enjoyment in entering gay “cruising” culture as passing man. It’s that same impersonal, focused on just the pleasure and not the meaning - but without the power dynamic and pretense. I say, this is what I want, he agrees, and then a fun time is had by all.

              I think the difference between say, sex as work and making food as work - I don’t really need to care or like the person who makes my food. There’s not an incentive for them to participate in something that can be physically painful or uncomfortable and then even pretend to be enjoying it through that pain. A lot of workplaces do force you to pretend in similar ways - don’t Chikfila employees have to say “my pleasure” or something - but pretending while dissociating in the act does fuck with your head in unique ways I think.

              Working in Nevada or the Netherlands might be different. I guess when legalized, maybe you can say “slow down” or press a button for help when they take off the condom. I’ve only lived my life of course.

              I do have some professional help, but don’t live in an area where the mental health needs of transexual former hookers are particularly accommodated for.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        All sex is transactional, all women are whores and all men are johns, it’s just we have this weird cultural thing where it’s a crime to say “Look can I just Venmo you?” so we have to do things like pay for sex with flowers and chocolates and restaurant meals and jewelry and alimony.

        “I faked all my orgasms” is up there with “your dick is small” on the list of “things women always say to men they’re angry at” so at some point his ability to care if its true or not burns out.

        • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Are you sure it’s not just the women you’re having sex with are faking their orgasms?

          Like, penetrative sex does not lead to orgasm for the majority of people with vaginas. You have to stimulate the clitoris. If you aren’t doing that - they probably are faking to get you to be done with it.

          I’ve never met women concerned about dick size - being a “size queen” seems to be more of a thing for gay men. I don’t think there’s a lot of variation in feeling in a vagina for anywhere in the 4-7 inches range.

          The attitude that all women are whores and that all sex is transactional seems sad to me. I had men say that to me when I was in the trade, and that was the kind of thing that contributed to it being hellish and unpleasant. I like the idea that sex is something people do because it’s fun and makes them feel good, not that it’s some sort of asymmetrical and hostile game.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            I mean, sure. It’s easy to accuse me of being uniquely bad at sex, right? “Are you sure it’s not a YOU problem?”

            Well according to the women I’ve slept with I’m simultaneously great and terrible in bed depending on if she was breaking up with me at the time the topic came to discussion. She’s either faking it in bed and the truth only comes out months later, or she’s having a good time in bed and trying to hurt my feelings while she’s angry at me. Which is why I brought up dick size. I don’t care if women care about dick size. I have a normal average medium-size dick and I’ve never been told that by a woman, it’s either huge or tiny depending on her desire to boost or bruise my ego. I’ve had the same woman say both.

            I’ve asked every woman I’ve slept with some variation of Do you like that? What do you want to do? What’s your favorite? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a useful answer out of that line of questioning. The most common response is an indignant “I don’t know!!!” like it’s an inappropriate question to ask at this moment. Or an “uh…yeah” or the surprisingly common continue to rhythmically moan as if no question was asked

            Faking orgasms to get sex over with faster and then agreeing to have sex again with the same person is not the behavior of someone who wants to cum during sex. It’s such a dumbass way to go about achieving that goal that it’s just easier to believe the goal is something else.

            She’s either got the notion in her head that there exists a man who “just knows” what she wants and she’ll never have to verbalize her wants or needs because he “just does” what she wants. Maybe she’s seen an old couple whose routines are in perfect sync and they fall apart without each other, and romcom movies have her convinced he just exists somewhere fully formed and all you’ve got to do is bend over to pick up dropped papers in front of the right business executive to get it, not spend 40 years of marriage living together, communicating, arguing, winning, losing, compromising, choosing battles and, pause for gasp, sometimes doing things for him too. So she just tries out a man, when he isn’t precisely what she has in mind she ghosts him and moves on to the next one.

            Or, she’s willing to get on her back if if means a free meal at local fancy restaurant she can post to Instagram and maybe also even eat.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    I want to know what the state of the art AI sex robot is right now. Because they have those realistic-ish sex dolls, and some pretty advanced LLMs that can chat conversationally, and longer term memory is starting to get into the LLM repertoire so your bot can remember things about you and reference them later.

    I feel like we’re 3-5 years away from a high end AI prostitute startup becoming huge.

    • weew@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      “natural” movement and the Uncanny Valley might be the next biggest hurdle actually.

    • Grabthar@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It pains me to think that there soon may be a whole new employment field built around the demand for workers trained to muck out robo-vajayjay.

    • L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      eye got chu fam

      My favorite part, is that ALL of the current AI companion products use subscriptions to LLM services instead of having built in models.

      Which means ifwhen the company stops paying their bill, or if the AI company goes under, your waifus goes kaput. Or more likely just restructuring because of a buyout. It’s already happened with a few companies -> big tech buys out the company then stops supporting the product line, that then customers get mad. IIRC, coincidentally HP is being sue for doing just that with some recent buyout right now lmao.

      The ante seems to get upped each time, and there exists at least one unstable lonely maniac that will not consider legal consequences to their actions when they are suddenly rugpulled out of their unhealthy addictive relationship, so there’s still room for the bubble to burst in an even more epic crash.