Hello Dolly: Today’s Customized Synthetic Companions Set the Stage for Tomorrow’s Pleasures

M. Christian
5 Min Read

What takes science, art, and a lot of skill may soon be as easy as one, two, three

Ever wondered what goes into highly personalized, uniquely styled, and largely hand-made sexbots? Pulling back the curtain, several prominent manufacturers have now begun detailing exactly what goes into producing their one-of-a-kind synthetic companions.

Definitely interesting, especially in light of how rapidly the industry’s been growing over the last few years, due to how enthusiastically consumers show interest in increasingly advanced models equipped with Large Language Model (LLM), artificial intelligence capabilities.

But what’s even more fascinating is how the current time-consuming and often exorbitantly expensive process might become considerably less difficult, far more cost-effective, and therefore more affordable, as well as open up exciting new possibilities for their designers to explore.

A little bit of this

One such industry promo on Filthy reports that their process begins with a collaboration between their in-house artists and what a potential client is looking for, which may or may not include a certain amount of 3D modeling.

RECOMMENDED READ: Artificial Companion Designers: Time To Think Beyond Just Sex?

However, it’s worth noting the company doesn’t disclose any restrictions or safeguards in place that prevent a customer from requesting their synthetic companion to nonconsensually resemble another person.  

As we’ve repeatedly reported, this is an issue not just for the physical synthetic companion industry to address, but also because it is painfully similar to how the generative AI companies repeatedly fail to protect people from having their deepfake likenesses or personalities used or sold without their permission.

A little bit of that

Once the client’s expectations have been established, the next step is essentially the production of any non-customized companion, which involves pouring flexible TPE plastic or silicon into a specially formed mold and around a multi-joined steel or aluminum skeleton.

After curing, the next and final step is to give it all sorts of human touches, such as whatever skin tone, hair color or style, eyes, and sexual components the customer requested.

Although this example is relatively simple, other manufacturers may offer increasingly sophisticated options, which could include bio-mechanical movements such as lifelike features, automatically moving eyes, lips, or the ability for the companion to track its head back and forth.  

To give you an idea of what these other models are capable of, just look at any of RealDoll’s products—with the notable exception of their new Realbotix models, which, as we covered, have been puzzlingly de-eroticised

Sugar and spice

Looking ahead a few years, the process of fabricating customized synthetic companions could be easier and cheaper by leveraging a bit of virtual assistance to make.  

Not only in making companions act and talk progressively more realistically but AI image generation software could aid in helping clients visualize their ideal companion.  

Ideally with protections in place preventing anyone from illicitly copying someone else’s appearance or personality, we could see a system where your instructions would be given to a specially coded artificial intelligence directing large scale 3D printers to either form a mold for your companion or to build everything all at once.

Snips and snails

We might go even further towards achieving quick, low-cost, and everyday accessibility through modularity.  For example, while a companion’s overall shape and appearance, along with any other customer-preferred characteristics, would be customizable, its internal mechanism would instead be pre-made, ready to install whenever needed.

Sexual components, servos and actuators, internal processors—all of these and more could someday be check-boxes for you or anyone else to tick off when ordering your exclusively customized artificial companion.

Not only that, but there’s a real possibility these types of user-created companions may be even less costly to produce than when they have come to the end of their operational lifespans, or their owners might merely want to try something different. Their latex, silicone, or plastic components could be recycled. At the same time, their modular components are stored away or repeatedly reused.

It’s likely, given technological advances, that 2025’s high-priced, customized synthetic companions will probably be the anyone-who-wants-one-can-have-one sexually pleasurable product by the 2030s, if not sooner.

Image Source: Depositphotos

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M.Christian (they/them) loves nothing better than exploring the intersections of sex and technology—and speculating on the future of both. A highly regarded erotica writer they have six novels,12 collections, 100+ short stories, and 25 anthologies as an editor to their name. Their non-fiction regularly appears in many sites, but they're most proud of being a regular contributor to Future of Sex. Of their erotic fiction, Tristan Taormino said that “M.Christian is a literary stylist of the highest caliber: smart, funny, frightening, sexy—there's nothing [they] can't write about… and brilliantly.” Reflecting their unique ability to sympathetically and convincingly write for a range of genders and sexual orientations, their stories have appeared in multiple editions of Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Books of Erotica, and others. Their collection of gay erotic fiction, Dirty Words, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. While a majority of their stories have been collected into books like Dirty Words, their fondness for combining sex and science fiction is clearly evident in collections that include Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, Skin Effect Effect, Bachelor Machine, and Hard Drive: The Best Sci-Fi Erotica of M.Christian. As a novelist, M.Christian’s versatility is on full display with Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Brushes, Painted Doll; and the somewhat controversial queer BDSM/horror/thrillers Finger's Breadth, and Me2. M.Christian has worked on the industry’s production side as an Associate Publisher for Renaissance E Books and as a Publisher for Digital Parchment Services. The latter dedicated to celebrating the works of science-fiction legends such as William Rotsler, Jerome Bixby, Jody Scott, Arthur Byron Cover, Ernest Hogan, and James Van Hise. Covering topics like BDSM safety, sexual education, senior sexuality concerns, queer and gender issues, plus reviewing a variety of sex tech products, M.Christian’s non-fiction has appeared on sites like Kinkly, Tickle.Life, Sexpert, Queer Majority, Sex for Every Body, and—of course—their ongoing work for Future of Sex. If there’s anything M.Christian enjoys more than writing, it’s teaching. A featured presenter, sometimes with their friend Ralph Greco Jr, at national sex and BDSM events, they have lectured on kink play (with an emphasis on safety), polyamory, boosting sexual creativity, and erotica writing--for beginners or those wanting to go pro. M.Christian is a cohost on two popular sex-education podcasts: Love’s Outer Limits with Dr. Amy Marsh and Licking Non-Vanilla with Ralph Greco, Jr.