Sex dolls may be surfacing in recent controversy, but they are certainly not new: as far back as 8 AD Ovid’s Metamorphoses spoke of Pygmalion, who created his ideal woman from ivory. In the 16th century, French and Spanish sailors carried so-called dames de voyage, made of old clothes, to help with sexual solitude. And during World War II, the Nazi Government launched the Model Borghild Project to create an Aryan doll that satisfied soldiers' pleasure, while protecting them from venereal diseases.
Now, technological developments have replaced such rudimentary dolls, creating dummies with human muscle movements, synthetic voices and other astonishing AI capabilities, in the creation of sex robots (or gynoids).
As machines shaped as humans and programmed to provide sexual performances, sex robots—which are almost exclusively “female”—have been available on the market over the past decade. While their commercial use has mainly been restricted to private purchases, escort agencies and brothels in many countries have also begun to use them commercially.
