How Technology Will Transform Sex Before the Next Pandemic

As the world rides out COVID-19 at home, a high-tech future of sex, abetted by robots, virtual reality and AI is becoming easier to imagine.

How many readers find themselves isolated from their lovers right now? Unable to touch or know when next they will be touched, due to travel restrictions, quarantine, or self-isolation? How many couples have to live in separate homes because one is immunocompromised, or works on the healthcare frontline? And how many sex workers can no longer earn their regular livings because the business of interpersonal touch is too risky right now?

The interesting thing about this dilemma is that in the not-too-distant future technology will have solutions. They won’t be perfect answers, because there will always be a place for human-human intimacy. And yet they might make intimacy at a distance so much more bearable, and altogether safer.

Sex robots

Let’s get this one out the way early. Sex robots are, according to breathless and weak-punning media reports, a-coming. The sex dolls of recent decades are now being quickened by robotics and a breath of fresh AI. Their manufacturers call them sex robots.

I’m a little more reserved and have been calling them “dollbots”. That’s not to say I’m pessimistic. Sex robots are getting better, and if you read the best thinkers on the topic, like Kate Devlin, they are also likely to diversify. That means — in my words, not Kate’s — that they won’t always look like they are designed to serve a heterosexual male imagination.

So if isolation, a trip to Mars, or a severe case of InCelibacy narrows your options, then sex robots are an easy-to-imagine solution.

In a time of infection control, they may even function to improve hygiene. Abyss, the company who have been making silicone RealDolls for years, and who are among the leaders in dollbot development with Harmony, have been touting the antibiotic properties of their creations’ silicone skin.

That won’t really help with coronavirus. As the name suggests, it is a virus. But nice try, Abyss.

VR Sex

Virtual Reality (VR) is already here, and it is going to get better. If the history of the Internet is anything to go by, VR porn will drive a lot of the progress. Already, one can experience first-person VR erotica involving human actors or computer generated imagery (CGI).

Combine VR with teledildonics, the technologies that allow one person to stimulate another via wirelessly-connected sex toys, and the VR porn becomes altogether more immersive.

Like the sex robots, this kind of VR porn remains a one-player game. Solo pursuits are an important part of healthy sexuality, and doubly so in pandemic-induced isolation. I am sure that sex toy reputations are being made and broken while coronavirus has so many people stuck at home.

The really exciting development will be when VR sex can plug lovers in for sessions of two or more. Virtual avatars connected to pleasure-delivery devices will allow technophiles to rediscover interpersonal sex and the joy of mutual discovery.

Lovers, separated by quarantine, or by distance, will have something better than sexting and phone sex to share.

Imagine the world of casual sex, when you don’t ever have to meet IRL (in real life)? Match on a virtual no-strings app, and if you want to get down you can. No need to know if you are next door to one another or on different continents.

No need, in fact, for who you are to have anything to do with it. What matters is who you want to be.

Safety first

As long as there are new ways to have sex, there will be new ways to get hurt, both emotionally and physically. The anonymity of virtual sex promises encounters that can be broken off at the flick of a switch, the utterance of a safe word, or a change in biometrics on your smartwatch. That promise will free many people to act on fantasies that would be wildly unsafe, or simply unwise, in their IRL lives.

Of course for providers to deliver that anonymity, privacy laws and safety settings will have to evolve beyond their current antediluvian state. Not knowing who the other party is opens up the possibilities for impostors and predators. This is all going to take careful thought and fearless legislators. Leaders who stand up to those who can’t think “sex” without saying “heterosexual marriage”.

Sex work

The COVID-19 pandemic has made sex work impossible or, at the very least, more precarious than it was. I would encourage you to read first-hand accounts, like this one by Sydney sex worker Tilly Lawless, or this one by Mysterious Witt.

Sex workers have had to navigate the risks of coronavirus infection in a job that requires physical contact. As societies lock down, leaving them without income, many, as sole traders in an often stigmatised industry, face particular challenges obtaining unemployment support.

Many sex workers have moved to more virtual forms of work in order to earn at least some income. One option is camming. Another entails subscription-only sharing of content on OnlyFans and an ecosystem of similar apps.

But, as Mysterious Witt puts it, this transition has been easier for escorts and workers who already had an online brand:

Sex workers who work in brothels, strip clubs and on the streets haven’t been so lucky. The poorer the country they live in, the more precarious their situation.

If virtual sex is on the horizon, then we can be sure that virtual sex work is too. The camming sector already has much of the infrastructure, ready to combine with VR and teledildonics as those technologies become ready.

The coming storm will make everyone wet

This future I am envisioning conjures up the perfect storm for both religious conservatives and a certain segment of radical feminists. They find themselves in otherwise unlikely mutual opposition to pornography, sex work, and now sex robots. Expect them to try shut all of these technologies down.

Tech prospectors who want sex to have a safe, ethical and profitable future should avoid the move-fast-and-break-things approach. They should shy away from dealing with the anti-sex devil to restrict the new tech to people who couple in a limited number of approved ways.

Instead, they should involve the people who know the industry inside and out. They should involve sex workers, and not just one kind of sex worker, in the development of virtual sex tech. Escorts, brothel workers, pornographers, cammers, sugarbabies, women, men, cis-, trans-, straight, queer and the entire rainbow. Make sure that virtual sex cuts the people who depend on sex for their livings in on the deal, rather than cutting them out.

They would also do well to involve people who enjoy casual unpaid sex, practitioners of ethical non-monogamy, people who counsel married couples, and sex therapists.

If that happens, the future of virtual sex will be much more likely to be safe, ethical, and fun. And it might just be there when we really need it in the next pandemic.