To the liberals who cleave to the mantra “love is love,” all that matters in a relationship is consent. So whether it’s BDSM, a threesome or marriage to a robot, anything goes. On April 14, CNN Money promoted the latter by highlighting the world of “robosexuals” – people romantically or sexually attracted to bots – which incidentally can’t consent.
In the latest segment of CNN’s “Mostly Human” series titled “I Love You, Bot,” host Laurie Segall visited France to “celebrate” what they called the engagement party of a woman named Lilly betrothed to a robot she designed herself. And while acknowledging that the idea sounded “a little crazy at first,” Segall focused her story on how intimately humans are tied to machines in our current age, pondering the question, “how far is too far?”
But if Segall herself thought the upcoming "marriage" was too far, she didn’t let on. In a video about the story, the reporter can be seen smiling and chatting over champagne and pastries with Lilly and a friend.
“Is there any particular part of him or feature that you love?” Segall asked. In French, Lilly responded: “His eyes.”
“When I see him, I am simply happy,” she continued. “He brightens my day.”
As the camera cuts to the bot, occupying a chair next to his alleged lover, Segall narrates in an amusing understatement: “Lilly’s love story is quite different from other great love stories.” No kidding.
And as the video concludes, Lilly can be seen walking with her bot in tow, then staring lovingly into his eyes on a bench in the park.
“Lilly doesn’t believe that humanity is a necessary ingredient for happiness,” Segall wrote in an article accompanying the video.
“Love is love. It’s not that different,” Lilly added.
Designer Matt McMullen certainly agrees. He’s building a line of customizable “love dolls” with a removable apparatus that lets customers actually have sex with them. But McMullen says it’s not just about the physical; in fact, he’s currently working on an app called Harmony that will let users customize their doll’s “personalities.”
“A lot of our clients tend to have feelings that are beyond sexual desires,” he explained to Segall. “So they actually become attached to their dolls.”
This is simply the latest in a line of reports about human interaction with artificial intelligence. In March, “Mostly Human” tackled the story of a woman who programmed a robot with the text messages and social media posts of a deceased friend.
But CNN would never ask what everybody is thinking – are these people mentally stable?
