I’ve enabled comments this week, for the first ever time on the site. I began blogging about sex tech, or perhaps the term porn tech would be more accurate, over fifteen years ago under the domain VirtualSexTouch.com, moving to ImmersivePorn.com several years later. Fifteen years ago and the porn tech landscape was very different today, and most people attempting to predict what it would be like in 2023, would probably be wide of the mark. Fifteen years ago, and very few people were talking about AI porn, or even VR porn. There was a lot of excitement regarding sex robots, although I doubt many expected that today, we would have the sophisticated AI sex chat bots that we have thanks to the recent explosion in generative and conversational AI. Instead, most would have expected that the future would present life-like sex robots that could move about a little, and change positions on bed perhaps, but still probably with rudimentary AI personalities and conversation. This is the complete reverse of what we in fact have in 2023. The other big trend that was just appearing in 2008 was 3D stereoscopic porn, enabled by something of a craze for 3D TVs and 3D cinema, which really took off the following year with the release of the first Avatar movie. Of course, this did not last long, but many commentators did expect the 3D porn revolution to last, or until it would be inevitably superseded in a matter of years perhaps by holographic TV porn.
Back in 2008, there were very few sites discussing sex or porn tech from a primarily male perspective. Instead, what sex tech blogs there were would focus on the latest electric vibrator, or other ‘sexual wellness’ topics. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much still the case today. One exception back then was the Slashdong blog, which took a very knowledgeable look at the latest developments in male sex tech, but it was discontinued in 2020.
Although that period was rather exciting, there wasn’t always a lot to talk about, and we had our expectations disappointed many times, in relation to 3d porn, virtual sex machines, sex robots, and even to an extent VR porn. Today, not only has VR porn been revitalized by the best-selling Occulus Quest 2, and now hopefully the Meta Quest 3, but we are probably on the cusp of a real revolution in augmented reality porn (or ‘mixed reality’ porn). But above all, the tsunami that is AI porn is hitting us, and nobody can predict where that will lead. We can certainly now hope with a degree of confidence, that real and life-like sex robots could be truly around the corner. In any case, it might not matter a lot, as I suspect that for most men, AR or VR girlfriends with conversational AI will be enough, especially paired with the increasing numbers of ever more sophisticated haptic sex toys that are coming to market.
Why have I chosen to allow comments only now? Well mainly because of spam. When I did briefly allow comments, I would be dealing with literally dozens of spam comments a day. No doubt it will be the same this time (in fact, I’ve already discovered that it is), but I will set up a plugin to hopefully deal with some of it. But the main reason I want to allow comments again is because the porn tech world is more exciting than it has ever been, and things are going to get pretty crazy no doubt over the next 2 or 3 years. It would be nice to build a little community here as we witness it happening, to discuss it, and even to be part of it.
