THE NEW GENERATION OF REALDOLLSThe
first RealDolls capable of moving on their own are already starting to appear on the market, a sort of first generation of sexual automatons that, if the industry's gamble pays off, will eventually give way to far more sophisticated dolls and, who knows,
fill homes around half the world with joy, happiness and surprisingly stable relationships.
For now, though, let's not get too excited. Their movements still look a lot like
the robot dance at an '80s nightclub. Yes, they move, but with the kind of stiffness that makes it pretty obvious there are motors, mechanical joints and a computer underneath the skin desperately trying to coordinate everything without making the whole thing look like an excavator starting up in the morning.
But these are just the early days.
After all, fitting a RealDoll's skeleton with
motorized joints, sensors and a central unit capable of interpreting voice commands and turning them into movements can't exactly be easy. And the really interesting part isn't so much what they can do now, but imagining what they'll be capable of five or ten years from now.
To put things into perspective, remember those AI-generated videos from just a few years ago showing
Will Smith trying to eat spaghetti while his face melted, fingers appeared and disappeared, and the spaghetti seemed to be trying to eat him instead. We laughed because the whole thing looked ridiculous.
And look where we are now.
Something similar will probably happen with robotics.
What looks clumsy, mechanical and even comical today could seem completely normal in just a few years. Smaller motors, smoother movements, better sensors, voice recognition, conversational AI, memory, personality... Every piece of that puzzle already exists separately. The real leap will come when someone manages to put them all together inside the same body and make the whole thing work reasonably well.
For decades, we've been told that
robots would eventually make their way into our homes to help us with household chores: cleaning, cooking, tidying up, fetching things...
What I never imagined,
not even in my wildest wet dreams, was that when they talked about robots helping around the house, they also meant lending a hand with our fantasies and vices.
Anyway.
The future is already here.
It just still moves a little like RoboCop after six shots.
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