Ghosting the Machine

Although video porn, webcams, and teledildonics have existed for decades, rapid advancements in virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics mean that a new era of digisexuality is—please forgive us—coming. In the May issue, Sam Lipsyte explores the “warm, sticky horse carcass” of technological intimacy with a trip to the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, where he meets a sex robot named Emma, as well as two scholars promoting digisexuality as a new type of identity. He joins web editor Violet Lucca for a discussion of technology’s potential to both offer succor and create stupor, the ethical questions raised by child sexbots and non-consenting AIs, and how the future of sexuality might be monetized by tech moguls.

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