Right now, people are having sex with a computer.

I don't mean that they're having sex with a RealDoll or similar—although I'm sure they are.

I mean that there are people out there, right now, who are shagging a state machine.

Welcome to the world of computer-assisted self-bondage (LINK IS VERY VERY NSFW!). Using Arduinos, Heath Robinson-esque contraptions involving keys held in CD trays, and Bluetooth-enabled electrostim machines, men and women have programmed their own doms or dommes. A truly merciless dominant who will randomly please or hurt, and there's nothing the user can do about it.

(There's a Terminator misquote here that I'm desperately trying not to make.)

Meanwhile, there are dozens of other people who are attempting to chat up a slightly different state machine.

Advertisers on porn sites around the world have figured out that users are, shall we say, somewhat preoccupied, and there are a limited number of advertising techniques that will work. One of the most common ones is a "fake chat" ad—an attractive woman propositioning the user with the promise of, at least, some hot Facebook or Snapchat messages.

Some of the more advanced ads actually take the user to a landing page where a very, very crude script will respond to them.

This has been happening for ages, of course. So why am I talking about it now?

Because tech developments in other areas are about to turn the whole "sex with your PC" deal from "crude and somewhat rubbish" to "looks like the AIs just took a really unexpected job away".

Soon you may well be able to summon a succubus. Through your PC.

Rise Of The Chatbots

Summoned servitors are about to make the mother of all comebacks.

I'm rather enthusiastic about that on a fictional level. Indeed, the film I just released, DANGEROUS TREASURES, came very close to being called BOUND THINGS instead—it's a story of a couple of geeks who follow clues on a deepweb occult forum which lead them to have a lengthy and bloody interaction with the bound guardian of the treasure they're robbing. And the binding and summoning of guardians is key to the entire thing (hopefully not spoiling it too much!).

(Amusingly for the topic of this post, the reason we didn't call it BOUND THINGS is that it sounded rather too porny.)

Accidentally, I seem to have hit something of a zeitgeist with this one. Because in Silicon Valley, I'm reliably informed, the Wave Of The Future is exactly this: summoned, intelligent servants which you can control if you know their True Name.