Dream Weaver: Exciting New Tech Might Let Us Record Our Sleeping Fantasies

M. Christian
5 Min Read

AI image generation could do wonders towards interpreting subconscious desires

The inability to recall our erotic dreams as well as reflect on them meaningfully may soon be a thing of the past, compliments of a novel artificial intelligence application developed by the Modem design group.

Unlike many other potentially life-changing technologies, Modem’s Dream Recorder isn’t a staggering high-ticket item, instead it’s totally open source. Therefore, anyone with a certain amount of electronics skill and access to its required components can assemble it in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Made of this—

Mark Hinch, Modem’s creative technologist, Ben Levinas and Joe Tsao, its industrial designers, and Alexis Jamet, its resident artist, describe their invention as “A portal to your subconscious. The magical bedside device catches your nightly visions and plays them back as vivid, cinematic reels.”

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Vivid may not be an overly accurate description, as rather than providing crystal clarity, Hinch and his team designed their Record to produce blurry, soft-focused images intentionally, similar to how dreams are usually more indistinct, less vividly precise even when we can remember them.

A head full of—

As with Snapchat’s recent text-visualizing AR glasses, Modem’s Dream Recorder leverages AI to alter pre-existing images—often without the original artist’s consent—based on user-inputted keywords or prompts.

The Modem Recorder utilizes OpenAI and LumaLabs AI software for its dream visualizations, which actively prevent anyone from generating explicit content.  

Bummer, I know, especially if you want to be able to document your subconscious’s late-night sexual fantasies, but with a relatively small amount of DIY tinkering, it should be possible to swap out these technologies for AIs that aren’t as exasperatingly puritanical.

According to Modem, putting together your own Dream Recorder should cost around USD 330, excluding extras such as having its case 3D printed if you don’t have your own. 

Not that pure novelty doesn’t have its special value, for, if anything, today’s often painfully serious world is increasing, if not desperately, seems to need as much playful whimsy as possible, but, while fun, Modem’s Dream Recorder is basically brightly wrapped around yesterday’s chocolate.

All I have to do is—

Not that the idea behind it isn’t intriguing, or could even eventually lead to us truly being able to record and playback our wildest dreams, but we would need a sexually-educated, far more open-minded AI. This would require no small amount of work, as current systems aren’t exceptionally well-informed on the subject of human reproduction, emotional health, and what does and doesn’t turn us on.

Once that admittedly Herculean task is completed, after feeding it a massive amount of either public domain or artist-permitted imagery, we can train it to listen and then, as accurately as possible, visually depict our subconscious experiences.

However, as it can take an excessive number of trials, not to mention a copious amount of errors, for an AI to create a specific image, we might help it along by letting it read our minds while we sleep.

Runnin’ down a—

How? We’re already technologically capable of monitoring what’s happening between our ears and even using AI to convert those patterns into actual words.

As University of Texas at Austin researcher Alexander Huth explained to Livescience about their work, “The really surprising and cool thing was that we can do this even without using language data. So we can have data that we collect just while somebody’s watching silent videos, and then we can use that to build this language decoder for their brain.” 

Put all this together and down what might be a surprisingly short road, we might slip on our sleep cap lined with microscopic sensors, and in the morning be able to watch, listen, and perhaps also feel again what we’d dreamt.

For the first time, we might have a door into the deepest parts of our sexual selves, unlocking never-before-seen options for erotic self-discovery, new, mind-blowingly wild, explicit entertainment possibilities, and avenues for therapeutic dream specialists to treat otherwise inaccessible sexual traumas.

Impossible?  

Perhaps, but as we’ve all learned at some time or another, sometimes the best dreams are the ones that only seem like they are.

Image Sources: 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.