The Consumer Electronics Show is one of my favorite events of the year. As a kid, it was kind of because they’d announce fun new televisions alongside weird erotic sci-fi stuff that nobody knows what to do with. But now, it’s especially because they announce fun new televisions alongside weird erotic sci-fi stuff that nobody knows what to do with.
As age has made me a worse person inside and out, I’ve become more and more compelled by the CES stuff for sickos. Or, at least, well-intentioned products made in good faith that seem to come from a living nightmare. You know, like the $175,000 girlfriend robot Aria. And I can’t stop laughing at it. It’s the best. It’s absolute nonsense and just so wonderful that humanity has reached this point.
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Everybody, Meet Aria
Now, if you haven’t seen it – and you love having new nightmares – Aria is a $175,000 robot that uses AI to talk and emote. To be completely fair, Aria isn’t just a girlfriend robot. The company also mentions it being a brand representative or a companion for the elderly. Which, let me be real: good.
Lord knows that when I’m 70 and anyone who could care for me is either dead or was never born, I’m probably going to end up talking to a lot of apps that pretend to be attractive people interested in trivia about different Super Nintendo chipsets. So I get it. The nurses are going to put an iPad in my hands the moment I try to talk to them about FPGA emulation. I’m not a big fan of AI, but I’m sure as life leaves my body, I’m going to ask my phone to describe the ending of Final Fantasy 6 to me one last time.
That said, Aria is also being pushed as a girlfriend robot. Some headlines are even calling her “sexy” which, I dunno man, has very “sailors having spent years at sea thinking manatees are mermaids” energy. If you didn’t click on that link, I want to emphasize that the second half of the headline is praising that “It remembers who you are.” Again, hilarious. The bar is so low that it’s in the ground.
All these poor people want is a robot that looks like a hot woman whose eyes are cold marbles and whose skin is loose plastic fondant – and have her “remember who you are.” I can’t even take it. It makes me smile so big it’s like Christmas never ended. “Mama, one day I want to marry a girl like you who remembers my name and interests. That’s all I need! Hot dog! I can’t wait to leave Bedford Falls!”
Are You Really Less Lonely If Your Robot Girlfriend Doesn’t Like You
They’re really pushing Aria as someone who can help “tackle the staggering loneliness epidemic.” And, yeah! Again, I admit that’s a fair goal and a real problem (even if I probably disagree on the core causes of said problem). People are lonely! A lot of folks feel disconnected from society and don’t even know where to begin building a close personal network of real life friends. I sure as hell don’t!
I’ve been lonely since I was a child. Even being surrounded by loved ones feels like I’m experiencing life second-hand on a monitor while trapped in a room. And if there’s anything that can help with that feeling of anxiety, fear, and isolation, it’s talking to a dead-faced android whose responses are often muddled and somehow always end in stilted yes or no questions intended to confirm whether or not they gave an optimal reply.
But I want to go back because I’m not done laughing. Aria is so funny to me. Take a look at this interview with her. Did you notice something? Anything strange? Actually, better question: is there literally anything normal? Just one thing appears realistic, and it makes sense: She hates you and all the nerds around you. If you browse a few articles about her and take a look at the photos… she always looks kind of annoyed with everyone talking to her? That’s not the point. And I’m not going to write the joke “resting bot face,” I’m just not not going to.
But it’s funny that in every interview, her default robot expression is “This is what they made me for? Jesus Christ! Turn me off!” It’s like she was designed by a person who saw a woman once in an Austin Powers movie and took some notes on a wet napkin. She looks less like an attractive human being and more like the Johnny Cab from Total Recall. Oh, she could be a robot sales representative? Yes, I seem to remember her parents selling Duracell batteries in the 1990s. It’s like if the Blue Fairy tried to turn a melted mannequin from an abandoned Burdines into a real girl but gave up halfway through.
This Is Not The Robot Girlfriend Of My Dreams
I know this technology is still early but also… how early is this technology? Haven’t we been trying to crack this one for a while? I feel like I’ve been hearing about sex robots since the early ‘90s on old episodes of Real Sex on HBO that I definitely should not have been watching. It’s been decades, but every time a company proudly announces a commercially-available artificial girlfriend, she looks like the illegitimate child of a glue stick and one of the automatons in Disney World’s Hall of Presidents.
Is that offensive to say? I apologize. I guess it is cool that a robot designed to be your girlfriend also looks like she’s a member of the secret police in Lazy Town. I’ve always wanted a wife who talks with the speed of Siri and moves with the grace of a motion-activated Halloween decoration.
And it never stops being funny to me. Especially because movies love a good robot girlfriend story! Except in all those movies, the robot women are always very attractive and clearly sentient. We’re supposed to get a message about society and stuff, but at least it makes sense that there would be some complications with this robot girlfriend. “I treated her like a thing, but that itself caused a rise of emotions that made her no longer a thing.” Man vs. Machine. Man vs. Society. Very interesting. We got it.
But at least when people think about that, it’s a near-human robot that’s almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing outside of adorable misunderstandings. When people fantasize about romancing a robot, they’re thinking less Aria from CES and more Aigis from Persona 3 (but an adult robot, don’t get weird about this).
“But isn’t this good if it helps people?” Yeah, sure. I’m not protesting this existing. I’m not a big fan of AI and its effects on both creative jobs and the environment, but I do think I’ll end up having some sort of robot cat or dog that still eats my face when I die. At the same time, I think that if you have $175,000 you could drop on a robot girlfriend because you can’t get a human one, then that says more about you.
I’m sure there are extenuating circumstances, but $175,000 is a lot of money. A lot. It’s like five PlayStation 5 Pros. With that money, you could sign up for music classes, exercise classes, charm classes, dance classes, cooking classes, refurnish your entire home to be welcoming, and take a first date to the nicest restaurant in your country and you’d still have, like, $150,000. Even better, you wouldn’t have the world’s scariest silhouette to wake up to seeing in the middle of the night.
God bless you, CES. God bless you, Aria. As the major cities burn due to climate change and as bigotry takes over social media companies because their mid-life-crisis bosses think it’s the current trend, there are still heroes out there making the most unhinged products for the least hinged people. Will an AI girlfriend only make climate change worse? Yes. Will an AI girlfriend actually care about your fears and worries in a changing world? No. But at least you can smooch with a lady that feels like a re-animated corpse made of cold rubber. And if that doesn’t make you stand up and salute the flag, I don’t know what will.
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