Guys and Dolls

In October 2020 the book „Maschinenliebe“ (ed. Oliver Bendel) was published by Springer. The title means „Machine Love“, „Machines for Love“ or „Machines of Love“. Three contributions are in English. One of them („Guys and Dolls“) is by Kate Devlin and Chloé Locatelli (King’s College London). From the abstract: „This chapter explores the creators and potential consumers of sex robots. With Realbotix as our case study, we take a closer look at the language and sentiments of those developing the technology and those who are testing, consuming, or showing an interest in it. We do this by means of website and chat forum analysis, and via interviews with those involved. From this, we can see the motivation for developing a sexual companion robot places the emphasis firmly on the companionship aspect, and that those involved in creating and consuming the products share an ideology of intimacy and affection, with sexual gratification only playing a minor role.“ More information via www.springer.com/de/book/9783658298630.

Fig.: Kate Devlin in London

Artificial Voices of Sex Robots and Love Dolls

In love and sex, the voice is a decisive factor. It not only matters what is said, but also how it is said. Pitch, volume and personal expression are important to attract and retain potential partners. The same goes for sex robots and love dolls, and is true for chatbots and virtual assistants with sexual orientation as well. If you are not working with ordinary recordings, they all need artificial voices (if you decide to use voices at all). The synthetization of voices, or speech synthesis, has been an object of interest for centuries. Today, it is mostly realized with a text-to-speech system (TTS), an automaton that interprets and reads aloud. This system refers to text which is available for instance in a knowledge base or on a website. Different procedures have been established to adjust the artificial voice. A recently published article by Oliver Bendel examines how the Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) can be used for sex robots and love servants. Existing tags, attributes and values are categorized in the present context and new ones are proposed to support the purpose of the special machines. In addition, a short ethical discussion takes place. The article „SSML for Sex Robots“ is part of the new Springer book „Love and Sex with Robots“ …

Fig.: The artificial voices of love dolls and sex robots must be specially designed