A life-sized robot dubbed "Aria" drew plenty of attention on the show floor of this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

She's as tall as a human, can speak with an AI-enabled voice, and move her head in an unsettlingly jerky fashion.

Andrew Kiguel, the CEO of Aria's creator Realbotix, told reporters at the convention that she was designed to interact with other humans, greeting guests at a theme park or acting as a concierge at a hospital.

"Realbotix robots, including me, focus on social intelligence, customizability, and realistic human features, designed specifically for companionship and intimacy," Aria told CNET on the show floor.

But something about Aria's sexualized appearance had plenty of users on social media wondering: why does she remind us so much of a sex doll?

As it turns out, there's a very good reason: Aria's predecessors were sex dolls. An examination of the company's past reveals twists and turns ranging from a California-based factory producing silicone sex dolls to a years-long effort to rebrand them into "companions" to combat a loneliness epidemic.

But Realbotix assured us that Aria's job definitely isn't to have sex with humans.

"Realbotix no longer produces sex products," a spokesperson told Futurism in an email. "Aria does not have genitalia. She is not anatomically correct and has a hard shell body. And is not meant for sex."

In April, Realbotix's parent company Simulacra was acquired as part of a $16.7 million all-stock deal by Canadian crypto company Tokens.com, which was cofounded by Kiguel.

One of Simulacra's subsidiaries, Abyss Creations, is the Las Vegas-based company behind RealDolls, a product line of sex dolls that the company has been producing for over two decades.

As Canadian business publication The Logic reported last year, Simulacra shifted gears to robots that could talk and move in 2016, before announcing an AI-powered RealDoll in 2018.

"It’s not the technology that’s to be feared as it is the intent behind it," Simulacra founder Matt McMullen, who now serves as Realbotix COO, told San Diego-based PBS affiliate KPBS at the time. "And for us where really a lot of our focus is on people who would benefit from having a presence in their life, who can’t find the way to bond with another human being for whatever reason they choose not to, and I think these dolls fill that void for some people."

That kind of sentiment, of using humanoid robots for those in search of human connection, lives on under Kiguel's leadership. Except instead of providing sex, the robot is now seeking to be an emotional companion, reminiscent of the AI chatbots that have surged in popularity over the last few years.

"It can be like a romantic partner," Kiguel told Forbes last week. "It remembers who you are. It can act as a boyfriend or girlfriend. If you ever saw that movie 'Her,' we're trying to do that."

Asked about the pivot, Realbotix said the move to spin off RealDoll, which is a "separate company," was "inspired by the desire to grow the robotics business."

"The ties to the adult industry make it hard to finance and some robot customers are sensitive to being attached to the companion dolls," the spokesperson continued.

"The decision was made to separate the two so that the Realdoll business didn't hold back the growth of the more mainstream robotics business," they added. "The companies are independent but they do interact. Realdoll, for example, would purchase robotic heads from Realbotix."

Still, the company's efforts to position the tech as a hotel concierge or theme park attraction appeared to be a tough sell, garnering ridicule on social media.

"I'm cracking up about this Realbotix AI girlfriend," one X user tweeted. "The funniest thing is it's not even a sex toy. Like they made this weird thing that looks like Chucky and moves like It's a Small World After All presumably for people who would bang it, but they can't bang it lol."

Realbotix acknowledged that Aria's appearance might not be quite right for every professional opportunity.

"We agree, she wouldn't be the right appearance for a hospital, but maybe a concierge at a casino," the spokesperson told Futurism after being asked about her exaggerated features. "The other robot models on display were more conservative in appearance."

Realbotix's appearance at CES is intriguing for a number of reasons, and not just for its parent company's storied history of producing sex dolls. Tokens.com, the company that acquired Simulacra last year, has its own eyebrow-raising past: the company made headlines in 2021 after blowing a whopping $2.4 million on just over 6,000 square feet of "digital land" from the metaverse "real estate" company Decentraland.

Decenetraland, which sold plots of virtual land as NFTs via an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency, turned out to be a massive flop and subsequently faded into a "virtual ghost town."

Whether the company's latest maneuverings will appease investors — Realbotix is publicly traded on three exchanges in Canada, the US, and Germany — remains to be seen.

"This acquisition diversifies our assets and business base," Kiguel said in a press release statement when it bought Simulacra. "Going forward, we will be less reliant on the performance of crypto prices."

"While most AI tools available today are filtered for content and viewpoints, Simulacra's AI technology enables humans and robots to foster genuine connection through unfiltered, human-like conversation," he added in a separate statement.

We'll see about that. Currently, the company's products sometimes invoke the dystopian amusement park populated by android "hosts" in the 1973 film "Westworld" and its more recent HBO adaptation of the same name, and not necessarily in a good way.

"You can actually remove the faces off our robots in under five seconds," Kiguel told Forbes. "The body parts are also modular, so we can actually pull them apart, put different faces on and create a whole new robotic character off the same chassis."

It remains to be seen whether Realbotix's bold pivot to AI robotics will prove a success. The company has an uphill battle, especially considering a steep competition. Companies like Elon Musk's Tesla and the ChatGPT-powered robot by AI robotics company Figure are also working on realizing a similar, humanoid robot-filled future.

But neither of those companies will have to battle the perception and association with flesh-simulating sex dolls and robots, a thorny and potentially business deal-derailing affiliation Realbotix will have to contend with going forward.

More on Realbotix: "Companionship" Robot That Its Creator Says Is Definitely Not a Sex Robot Looks Around With a Dazed Expression


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