“It will respond with actions and voice, focusing on emotional connections to greatly improve the user experience.” Chinese sex doll manufacturers are using artificial intelligence to improve their products and provide a more advanced user experience.

Sexy and smart doll produced in China. Image via: Instagram/starperydollofficial

Chinese tech engineers are applying technology similar to ChatGPT to sexy robots, hoping to design interactive companions based on artificial intelligence. They will face many technical and ethical challenges.

In Shenzhen, a sex doll manufacturer is currently training its own large-scale language model to use artificial intelligence to improve its products. Available in both male and female forms, these sex dolls with unprecedented capabilities will soon hit store shelves.

Doll Factory CEO Evan Lee said earlier this month: “We are developing the next generation of sexy dolls that can interact vocally and physically with users, and we plan to launch a prototype soon.”

“Technical challenges remain, particularly in achieving realistic human-machine interaction,” he said. “While simple conversations are easy, creating interactive responses requires specialized software vendors to develop complex models.”

Traditional dolls are supported by metal skeletons and silicone shells and can only make simple reactions, lacking the expressive abilities needed to interact with humans.

“The new generation of sexy dolls are driven by artificial intelligence models and equipped with sensors that can respond through movement and voice, greatly improving the user experience by focusing on emotional connections rather than basic conversational capabilities,” Li said.

China's new generation of large-scale artificial intelligence sexy dolls is about to be launched

The new generation of sexy dolls is driven by intelligent models and equipped with sensors, and their joints such as fingers will be more flexible and closer to humans. Photo by: Jinsan WMdoll

The company previously focused on overseas markets, but recently adjusted its strategy to pay more attention to the domestic market.

Lee said that although Chinese society is generally conservative and people are generally reluctant to discuss such topics, China is the largest market for sex dolls, with sales exceeding those of the United States, Japan and Germany combined.

“Industry professionals know that the Chinese market is huge and that the purchasing power of big cities exceeds that of many European countries. The Chinese market is also very open-minded, even if its aesthetics are different from that of the European market,” he said.

In addition to sexy dolls, the doll factory’s development plan will also develop robots that can perform household chores, assist the disabled, and provide care for the elderly. By 2025, the company plans to launch its first “intelligent service robot” that can provide more complex services to the disabled. According to the company’s plans, by 2030, these robots will be able to protect people from dangerous work.

Lee said there were two main challenges in reaching this level of development: battery capacity and artificial muscles.

First, unlike electric cars, humanoid robots don’t have room for large batteries, so to make them run independently, the energy density of the batteries needs to be increased. Second, Lee said, the current motor lacks the flexibility of human muscles and cannot exert force over a wide range. It is both hard and soft and adheres tightly to the skin.

Currently, to ensure realism, smart sex dolls often weigh up to 40 kilograms (88 pounds), which is too heavy for the motor and risks falling or injuring the user.

“So in the first phase, we focus on reducing weight by improving materials and production processes,” Li said. As of July 2023, their 172cm (5ft 6in) doll weighed just 29kg.

Lee said robots that can do housework are a vision for society, but there is still a long way to go before it can be realized. Some robotics companies may use servo motors to perform some functions, but considering stability and cost, commercialization is still a long way off.

“The industry as a whole believes it will take another ten years to reach this goal,” he said.

In addition to technical difficulties, Lee said the company also faces product cost and ethical issues.

Reducing the cost of high-performance motors and batteries are two major challenges facing sex doll manufacturers today. Image via: Instagram/starperydollofficial

Gearboxes are key components in the mechanical systems of humanoid robots, used to transmit power between the motors and the robot’s joints. They typically account for 30% of a robot’s cost and may require multiple gears at different joints.

“We are trying to reduce costs so that more people can afford realistic and good quality sex dolls, and adding micro motors will increase the cost to some extent,” Lee said.

The sexy doll factory is located in Shenzhen, southern Guangdong Province, which is currently the most complete adult sex toy production base in the world, which gives the company a cost advantage.

This sexy doll factory has a complete supply chain and controls manufacturing costs very well. A doll sells for around US$1,500 (about RMB 10,600), while similar high-end Harmony dolls produced by Abyss Creations in the US start at US$6,000.

“The supply chain in Shenzhen and Guangdong and surrounding areas is very complete, and manufacturers respond very quickly to market demand. New technologies can usually be seen in new products within a month,” Lee said.

In addition to this sexy doll factory, other Chinese doll manufacturers are also integrating artificial intelligence into physical dolls. Two doll factories located in Zhongshan, Guangdong and Dalian, Liaoning are also set to launch similar large-scale intelligent interactive dolls.

Jinsan WMdoll in Zhongshan, Guangdong is about to launch a new generation of large-scale intelligent sexy dolls. Image by: WMdoll

Over the past year, large-scale language models have greatly promoted the development of various fields, especially the evolution of the humanoid robot industry.

“Innovation driven by personalized models trained on different datasets has spawned a series of products that are changing the industrial landscape and user interactions,” said Tang Jie, a professor of computer science at Tsinghua University.

For example, in the humanoid robot industry, large language models play an important role in its development.

A doll factory in Dalian, Liaoning, will launch a new generation of sexy and intelligent large-scale dolls. Image by: Exdoll

Ou Jinyan, a spokesperson for a robotics company, said: “This not only accelerates the iteration of robotics technology and improves motion control, but also generates a set of user-friendly tools that can greatly improve developers’ work efficiency.”

Beyond the technical issues, the industry faces very human considerations. AI-powered sex dolls may blur ethical and moral boundaries and create controversy around sexual consent and objectified gender.

Some of these critics argue that an overreliance on AI companions to satisfy erotic or emotional needs could lead to less authentic connections between people, affecting users’ ability to form healthy relationships with real people.

The rapid development of AI sex dolls is outpacing existing legal and regulatory frameworks, leading to legal gray areas regarding their use, ownership, and the responsibilities of manufacturers and users.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology pointed out in its 2023 paper “Research Report on Ethical Governance of Artificial Intelligence”: “AI robots that can make decisions under certain conditions may challenge human autonomy and self-awareness.

“Large language models also pose a risk of data leakage and privacy violations, as user information could become the raw material used to train generative AI robots.”

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