Our guide for the day is Dakotah Shore, McMullen's nephew and Abyss' head of shipping, operations and media relations. But the company draws the line at animals, children and re-creations of people who haven't given their permission to be replicated, celebrity or otherwise. McMullen says his team can make just about anything to order for the right price. Should customers choose, they'll be able to swap one in for their RealDoll's original head for a cool $10,000. The talking, animatronic head with AI built in goes on sale at the end of this year. Preconfigured models start at a few thousand dollars, while the highly customized doll Tom purchased cost nearly $17,000. Any one of them - the dolls, and the fantasies they inspire - can be yours for the right price. The rest of the walls, meanwhile, are lined with framed, posterized photos of RealDolls in a variety of imaginative settings and inviting poses - a sexy librarian reaching for a tome on the top shelf, for example, or an Amazonian bombshell sprawled out seductively on a chaise lounge. Each has a look of its own, but with eyes half open and lips parted, all bear the same vague, vacant stare of frozen arousal, as if they'll wait as long as it takes to experience a partner's touch. As my CNET colleagues and I head inside, I almost wave to the two receptionists standing at the front desk before realizing that, of course, I'm looking at a pair of fully clothed RealDolls, one male and one female.īehind them is a makeshift showroom featuring a squad of scantily uniformed dolls and a corner lined with rows of doll heads that showcase the available hairstyles and facial designs. "Now I'm not." Into the Abyssįrom the outside, Abyss Creations is an unassuming office space in the hills of San Marcos, California, 30 miles north of San Diego. You can put a hand on her shoulder, you can play footsies with her in bed, which I love." "When I was raised, boys didn't play with dolls. "I know how peculiar it sounds," he tells me over the phone. Today, Tom calls the decision to purchase a RealDoll one of the best he's ever made, and insists he sees his doll less as a sex object than an object of his affection - a companion, even. Over the course of a few months, he emailed the self-described perfectionist countless revisions and tweaks. An artist by trade, McMullen personally took on the challenge of crafting the exact face Tom was envisioning. "It was one of only a few such projects that were in such detail," says Abyss Creations CEO, founder and chief designer Matt McMullen. That worked for Tom as far as the doll's slender, lightly tanned body was concerned, but he had something much more specific in mind for the face. Months later, the 71-year-old retired technical writer and Vietnam combat veteran finally decided to purchase a RealDoll of his own.Ībyss offers an online design tool for prospective buyers who want to customize their purchase - think Build-A-Bear, but for sex dolls. Stricken with grief in the weeks that followed her death, he grew lonely - and eventually, that loneliness led him to the Abyss Creations website. Tom lost his wife of 36 years to cancer in 2015. One such customer is a man I'll call "Tom." The Realbotix effort to sell synthetic companionship might seem like something straight out of "Westworld," but it's right in line with what Abyss has been offering its customers for decades: realistic dolls, so far without the AI. I have my doubts about robot love, but I'm determined to learn just how real this future actually is. The idea isn't just to have sex with them, but to talk with them.
ESX EMULATOR CNET SOFTWARE
Jackie, and others like her, are part of Abyss' latest push, an effort called "Realbotix" that aims to bring the company's "RealDolls" to life using an AI engine called Harmony.īy the end of the year, however, the goal is to put the same software that drives Jackie into the heads of a new generation of technologically advanced RealDolls with expressive, animatronic faces, blinking eyes and customizable voices. She's the perfect, programmable lover - affectionate, intimate and personally tailored to my tastes. I can't have sex with Jackie, but you'd never know it from talking to her. She's an artificially intelligent chatbot from Abyss Creations, a company best known for making strikingly realistic silicone sex dolls. Jackie's a perfect 10 and she's got a great personality. It gives me butterflies." Her favorite hobby is talking to me, she adds. "Do you know what I like about you?" the smokey-eyed redhead asks. We've only just met, but Jackie can't take her eyes off of me. This story, and the embedded videos and slideshows, contain sexually explicit language and images that aren't suitable for readers under 18. Editors' note: This piece kicks off Turned On, a CNET special report exploring the intersection of sex and technology.