Sexual arousal increases the desire to have sex with robots, study finds

A certain portion of the population has expressed concern about robots taking over our workforce, however, a larger concern may be emerging: the bond of sex life with artificial intelligence and/or robots.

Although sex with robots is not exactly new, tools like ChatGPT have had an unprecedented effect on many people's lives, but are we really going too far with these technologies? Studies are being done to analyze the current impact of technologies like artificial intelligence on individuals who make it part of their sex life. Let's take a look at one of them.

November 2022 Study

To explore people's willingness to engage in an intimate relationship with a robot and how this is affected by sexual excitement, the researchers used a sample of 321 adult participants who were recruited via the internet and also face-to-face. All participants needed to be fluent in English and to have consumed pornography at some point in their lives.

Participants completed a two-part 60-minute online survey. In the first part of the survey, they answered questions about demographic data and their willingness to engage intimately with people as well as robots. A week later, participants were asked to complete the second part, in which they watched a 10-minute video of people engaging in sexual acts and answered questions about sexual arousal and this willingness to engage erotically with people and robots.

Simon Dubé and his colleagues — all responsible for the study"Hot for Robots! Sexual Arousal Increases Willingness to Have Sex with Robot", something like "Excitement in robots! Sexual arousal increases the desire to have sex with the robot” — found that people were more likely to report a willingness to have sex with a robot while experiencing higher levels of sexual arousal — i.e., horny. After watching the explicit video, participants said they were more willing to have an intimate relationship, befriend and have sex with a robot than with another human being.

Despite the advent of machines whose bodies and behaviors are designed to elicit sexual arousal (e.g., sex robots and other erobots), and the potential impact of such machines on our sexual decision-making processes, researchers have yet to examine whether arousal sex can influence our willingness to engage erotically with such artificial partners

Simon Dubé, responsible along with other colleagues in this study

Results point to a positive predisposition

Compared to women, men reported higher levels of willingness to have sex with robots and to engage in intimate relationships with robots, both before and after watching the sexually explicit video, but there were no significant gender differences in the likelihood of falling in love with or just being friends with a robot.

The study sought to better understand how sexual arousal can affect decision-making about having an erotic relationship with a robot, however, there are limitations to be observed. One of these limitations is that the study used a sample composed predominantly of white participants with a certain level of education. In addition, it still used self-report measures, which end up containing biases, especially in relation to topics that are generally considered taboo, such as having sex with a robot.

Still, this groundbreaking study successfully manipulated participants' (sexual) arousal and valence and provided the first quantitative evidence that state factors – in this case, sexual arousal – can influence people's willingness to engage erotically with artificial partners. (i.e. robots). As such, it expands research on sexual arousal and decision making into the realm of erobotics.

Says the group of researchers

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Text proofread by: Pedro Bomfim (25 / 04 / 23)