Abstract
AbstractAs society moves swiftly towards incorporating an increased number of social robots, the need for a deeper cultural understanding of companionship as a critical social aspect of human–robot connection is urgent. This cultural study examines how three of the most popular and publicly available sex robot marketing videos mobilise the meaning of companionship. Videos of "Roxxxy", “Harmony”, and “Emma” were examined employing a social semiotic discourse analysis based on a long history of identifying how advertisements tap into social and cultural ideals. Companionship is identified as: (i) enjoyed through attention, reliability, usefulness, support, trust, and kindness; (ii) including ideas of long-term commitment and endurance through the mundane, every day, and ordinary aspects of life; (iii) occurring where the meanings of connection for humans and robots are conflated even though they differ for humans and technology; and (iv) a vulnerability for both robot and human. Furthermore, the representations of robot companions remain limited to stereotypical concepts of women; viewers are positioned as desiring a product that claims agency but has none, and is marketed ‘as good as’ a human woman. In all, the representations are complex and far too simple—simple because this is an ideological model of companionship and complex because the ideas of technology are conflated with human–human ideals of companionship. Where technological design aspires towards a better future for humans, there is an urgency to move beyond the limited anthropomorphic cultural concepts presently aspired to in the design and marketing of companion robots.
Highlights
These are promises made by three of the most popular and well-known sex robots
As we swiftly develop into a society with an increased number of social robots and a growing number of robotic designs, there is an urgency for cultural research that identifies our social aspirations and assumptions about human–robot companionship
Because the design of social robots is intended to produce a social outcome, it is vital that we look more deeply at social meanings and how we communicate social ideals through media
Summary
These are promises made by three of the most popular and well-known sex robots. The promises appear less than 20 s into the marketing videos, highlighting the importance and focus of companionship in the marketing of the robots. I focus on how marketing videos mobilise the meaning of companionship in selling robots. To be clear, this is not an evaluation of sex robots as companions, nor does it involve users’ experiences of robot companions. This is not an evaluation of sex robots as companions, nor does it involve users’ experiences of robot companions It is, an analysis of three publicly available marketing videos of the most popular sex robots, which all identify companionship as essential and central to the marketing of the robots. Applied in research across faculties, more recent examples in health communications examine media image representations of dementia [8,9,10] These studies identified limited cultural and social ideas of people living with dementia
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