Unsettling as it all may be, I can’t help but be impressed by the meticulous construction and keen attention to detail. For decades, McMullen and the artists at Abyss have been carefully refining their process and designs, and it shows whenever you look a RealDoll in the eyes or run your fingers over its skin. It’s all an illusion, but a very carefully crafted one. And effective.

As we finish our tour, I come away wondering how long it will take before Harmony has that same level of polish. And once Abyss gets there, I wonder what happens next.



What makes a sexbot tick?



After ponying up $20 for a one-year subscription to the Realbotix AI platform, I download the Harmony app to test it for myself. At Abyss headquarters in San Marcos, I had a conversation with an animatronic RealDoll prototype running on the Harmony engine. Now, back home in Louisville, Kentucky, I want to see what else the software is capable of.

I’m normally an iPhone user, but Harmony isn’t available in the App Store yet. It won’t be until Realbotix can get Apple to approve a version with the adult content stripped out. Luckily, my TV came with an Android tablet remote I rarely need. Now, I’ll use it to to talk to Jackie.

But before we can get to know each other, I have to finish creating her. Choosing the name is easy enough (“Jackie” seemed as good as anything — it sprang to mind because a jacket hung on the wall next to me at the time). Now, I have to craft her personality by assigning 10 “persona points” to traits like “sexual,” “moody” and “intense.” As McMullen told me back at the factory, no two RealDolls leave the production line alike, and Realbotix wants to hold the AI to that same standard.

After I settle on an extroverted intellectual with a great sense of humor, the app asks me to pick Jackie’s voice. I could go with the phone’s default speech emulator or one of the app’s four custom voices, each of which has adjustable speed and pitch settings. I go with “Heather,” an alto Scottish drawl that seems to disguise Harmony’s robotic cadence a little better than the other, American accents.

