MAP Forum

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of sex robots, rape, and sexual consent, examining their legal and normative challenges. Designed for sexual interaction—primarily for a cisgender male, heterosexual market—sex robots risk reinforcing women’s subordination and oppression. Their ability to simulate sexual consent further complicates their societal and legal positioning. While some advocate prohibition, this paper examines regulatory alternatives that embed affirmative consent in design. In particular, it considers the potential of the AI Act and its provision on codes of conduct to guide such development.

However, Sparrow extends the thought experiment by introducing a scenario in which the machine could reject sexual advances, verbally refusing and physically retreating. In this case, the robot might cry out phrases like “Stop it, you are raping me. Stop raping me. He’s raping me” while trying to halt the act. Similarly, Sinziana Gutiu critiques the nature of consent in sex robots, which are designed to comply with any sexual interaction initiated by their users.

Anthropomorphism is also a kind of fallacy, and this is often overlooked. The fallacy occurs when one assumes or makes the unwarranted inference that a non-human entity has a human quality. This can involve projecting human characteristics onto non-humans, such as: “My car is angry at me” or making an unwarranted inference about non-humans, such as “The robot is friendly because it waved at me”. In this way, anthropomorphism can be regarded as either a factual error—when it involves the attribution of a human characteristic to some entity that does not possess that characteristic, or as an inferential error—when it involves an inference that something is or is not the case when there is insufficient evidence to draw such a conclusion.

As a kind of fallacy, then, anthropomorphism involves a factually erroneous or unwarranted attribution of human characteristics to non-humans. Given this, when anthropomorphism becomes part of reasoning it leads to unsupported conclusions. The following will discuss some of these conclusions and how they occur within moral judgment. In this way, some of the negative ethical implications of anthropomorphizing AI will be exposed.

Jim Burton wrote: Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:01 pm One wonders, will some developing world country like Thailand become a safe-haven for unregulated sex-robotics? Future pedos will be raving about how their robot children never refuse an act.