ABSTRACT
Thinking about the culture of artificial intelligence (AI) is essential for all societies and our potential social futures. Intimacy has thus acquired an inescapably technological imprint. Beyond the cultivation of personal and erotic bonds, intimacy today has also come to mean dating apps, sexting, virtual reality eroticism, AI sex toys, webcam sex and other sensory devices. With AI and robotics technology advancing faster than ever before, robots are becoming more human-like, which in turn creates the possibility of new modes of human-robot configurations – including, for instance, robo-friendships and AI intimacies. Central to David Levy’s argument is a conception of robots involving a significant transformation of both human sexuality and social relations. To situate sex robots in terms of property relations and advanced capitalism is to see it as an intricately woven texture of unequal power relations and gender hierarchy. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
