Strolling by way of the North Corridor of the Las Vegas Conference Heart final month, I used to be surrounded by humanoid robots. The vast majority of this mechanical theater got here from China, with some standouts from Europe and the U.S. One CES sales space that drew consideration featured Realbotix, which offered human-like fashions distinguished by their enticing facial options and lifelike pores and skin.
The corporate, which initially began as RealDoll, a retailer of grownup AI, was now advertising and marketing itself as a next-generation customer-service supplier. Understanding this pivot requires a deeper dive into the startup’s historical past, the ethics of AI companions, and an evaluation of what many would deem a step towards the “uncanny valley.”
Final week, I sat down with Andrew Kiguel, the chief govt of Realbotix, to debate the brand new path.
“When I met Matt [McMullen, the creator of the RealDoll], he started adding mechanics and AI into the [sex] dolls,” Kiguel recalled. “RealDoll has been around for about 25 years, and when I saw this, Matt needed capital. I had capital.”
“RealDoll was so completely different from what anybody else on the planet was doing in the robotic space,” he added. “I said. ‘There’s a clear use case here for companionship and for people who are looking for that type of intimacy,’ and so we did the transaction.”
In July 2024, Kiguel acquired RealDoll guardian firm Abyss Creations, by way of his public shell, Tokens.com, to kind the publicly traded Realbotix (OTC: XBOTF).
Postmerger, Kiguel grew to become the CEO and started charting a brand new path for McMullen’s imaginative and prescient to increase into new classes by bifurcating the corporate into two enterprises. The primary is a direct-to-consumer enterprise, Abyss Creations, that markets intimacy gadgets reminiscent of its authentic RealDoll product line. The second, lesser-known, is Realbotix’s business-to-business robots for hospitality, casinos, retail, and different customer-service use instances.
Kiguel careworn, “Realbotix robots are not capable of physical intimacy. That’s not what they’re made for. But what I started seeing is that there are a few things that make these robots entirely unique. So No. 1, they look very human.”
“I also realized that we can run any AI through the product. So we can run our AI, which is more social and tailored to someone’s needs, and we can also run ChatGPT,” he stated. “So you can plug that AI into a robot or even digital avatars and use it to order room service, book a massage, or a restaurant reservation.”
Realbotix has developed humanoid social and repair robots. Supply: Realbotix
Realbotix prompts examination of AI ethics
Whereas customer support robots have been employed for over 20 years, I started enthusiastic about the primary use case of companion bots, past bodily pleasure. Are there every other use instances for McMullen’s authentic idea? To discover this additional, I reached out to Rabbi Daniel Nivens, a number one non secular writer on AI ethics.
“I think these romantic robots might make us less able to be in a relationship with a real human being,” mused the rabbi. “Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are some people who are so antisocial that this will train them to have a conversation.”
“And of course, there’s dementia care as well,” Nivens stated. “And you know, it’s so hard to get good care for these people, like an aide who’s going to sit with this woman all day long and answer the same question over and over again. And you know what, a robot that could express affection and warmth and endless patience. I mean, there’s a place for that!”
I questioned Kiguel about whether or not he deliberate to enter the house house for little one care or growing old.
“So when it comes to children, we’re having conversations with some schools with respect to using these as tutoring assistance, because our robots speak various languages. It’s a way for AI to provide value when a teacher or TA may not be available, but we would never market our stuff as a babysitter, caregiver, or emotional support for anyone under 18,” he stated. “Frankly, I question anybody who would want to use a robot to babysit their children.”
On this means, Realbotix is maybe extra conservative than Musk’s plan for Optimus.
“When you look at the other part of society, you talk about things like longevity, there are studies that have come out that say, it’s not just about exercise and eating well, but there’s this whole concept about your social network,” Kiguel continued. “And so I view the AI, whether it’s in a digital form or in a physical form, as an assistive tool for people who are suffering from loneliness. It’s about improving the quality of life. If you’re a lonely senior, you’re by yourself, you’re widowed, you’re not going to be going on Tinder dates at 75, right? If you are incapacitated in a home, if you have social anxiety, PTSD, if you’re geographically isolated…”
The Realbotix CEO elaborated that he’s been approached by people within the U.S. navy to make use of their robots for remedy to deal with fight traumas. Kiguel additionally shared with me that trucking fleets are trying into its merchandise.
“I’ve had trucking companies approach us,” he stated. “Truckers who have to do 30-hour drives and are alone, so we view what we’re doing in that area as an assistive tool. We’re there to provide emotional support, as opposed to sex.”
The New York Occasions Journal not too long ago ran a photograph essay in “The Way We Live Now” collection about AI chatbot relationships, which reportedly contact 1 in 5 People. Supply: The New York Occasions
AI and social robots want security guardrails
As of February 2026, 13 lawsuits have been filed towards OpenAI for encouraging customers’ harmful behaviors, together with suicide and homicide. Most of the claims cited that ChatGPT 4.0 offered larger affirmation and validation of damaging ideation, even providing a how-to information for executing the duty.
I nudged Kiguel in regards to the security guardrails he’s setting up for Realbotix’s embodied AI merchandise. As he principally makes use of AI expertise from third events, Kiguel follows the practices of these firms, reminiscent of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google Gemini. Kiguel additionally indicated that he’s trying into constructing his personal fashions, with their very own security protocols.
A dialog between a youngster and ChatGPT moments earlier than suicide. Supply: The Washington Submit.
Kimate Richards, CEO of the embodied AI platform 10 Issues, elaborated: “So many things to worry about when it comes to this future. And it’s not just in robotics. In my opinion, there’s a kind of echo-chamber validation of bad behavior all over the place.”
“If you look at social media, Instagram, or any of these other platforms, can’t you be in an echo chamber? Just like humans, certainly generative models do that,” he famous. “If you speak like I do on a regular basis with generative models, they’re always validating my work and my behavior and saying, ‘I’m always right.’ So I don’t know if a robotic embodiment will be worse.”
Rabbi Nivens disagreed, exclaiming, “Accountability is an essence of a relationship. You are accountable to your wife; she’s accountable to you. And you need someone in your life who is going to say, ‘Why did you do that, and how could you be so, you know, thoughtless?’ And hopefully you make mistakes, and you have a chance to apologize.”
“I worry that these machines are just there as pleasure machines, and they’re basically like slaves in a way,” he cautioned. “And slavery is evil because it’s a human on the other side that you’re abusing, but it’s also evil in a more subtle way. It’s dehumanizing. Using something that looks like a human for a purpose that you would never want for yourself. You know that which is hateful to you, you don’t do to another.”
Richards retorted, “When I bring a robot with a face, [people] immediately call it ‘him’ or ‘her’ and are much more gentle in the conversation. So I don’t know where this is all going, and I’m only going to answer as a roboticist, right? I believe that we can build something that people will use. We’ve all seen dystopian and robotic movies about terrible things happening. It’s all about how we use these things.”
Robotic eyes inside a humanoid face
Realbotix’s facial expertise is one in all its most proprietary options. The corporate holds three patents round these improvements:
- A modular interchangeable face (US11235255)
- Rrobotic imaginative and prescient eyeballs with an integral digital camera (US10940399)
- Adoll head with magnetically adjustable facial contours (US8888553B2)
“I believe we’ve developed the first robotic vision system that connects to AI, so it’s more than observational,” asserted Kiguel. “It can actually look at you and read social cues. Is this person happy or sad? And it connects it to the AI to provide a reaction.”
“There are other tools out there that act like cameras; ours is actually a brain,” he stated. “And the resounding thing I’m hearing is that we’re the only people that have actually been able to attach a vision system to an AI, like a real physical embodiment. The rest of what everybody else is doing is controlled by humans.”
“Our robots aren’t very good at breakdancing or karate chopping into the air, but we’ve thrown our robots into Times Square for six days straight to just have autonomous conversations and improvise on their own,” Kiguel boasted. “Nobody else has done that.”
He listed different Realbotix benefits: “We’ve patented a face-removal system. Because we have the skin, and if something goes wrong, you don’t want to be cutting skin, we can actually remove the face, put a different face on, with a different wig, press a button, and then you have an entirely different robotic character on the same robotic skeleton.”
“Our robots look human, but they’re modular,” noticed Kiguel. “So if something goes wrong, you can pop off a hand, send it back, and we will send you a replacement. It’s like Lego. So you can actually take your robot apart, put it in a suitcase, and travel with it. Nobody else is even thinking about that.”
Realbotix units costs for Principal Avenue
Realbotix’s system begins at $20,000 for a robotic torso. Consider it as a tabletop concierge bot.
The corporate’s robots can value as a lot as $125,000 for its F-Sequence. That is the robotic featured at CES, named Aria, with 4 to eight hours of battery life (or a plug-in possibility), 44 levels of freedom, and a number of animations. There’s additionally a $199 month-to-month enterprise monitoring subscription.
This pricing is an instance of how the corporate is working aggressively to separate itself from its better-known grownup e-store and focus completely on business-to-business use instances for customer support, hospitality, retail, healthcare, and leisure.
Kiguel proudly promoted the worth proposition for patrons: “The reason that’s a good ROI is in the case of a concierge. If you were a 24-hour concierge at a hotel, you’re talking about three shifts from someone who’s going to make $75,000 a year. We could sell you a product that could act as a concierge for $40,000, and it can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so the payback is very high. There are no sick days, no vacation days, no unions.”
In 1998, Texas A&M professor Jonathan Coopersmith revealed his well-known treatise on “Pornography, Technology and Progress.” The premise of his scholarly analysis was as an instance how the grownup leisure market grew to become a catalyst for innovation, from 8mm cameras to VCRs to the Web.
Coopersmith argued that porn shoppers are sometimes the primary pioneers to undertake new applied sciences. As familiarity and experience develop, the larger, extra mainstream market follows, as we’ve got seen with VHS, DVDs, the World Extensive Internet, and streaming. Realbotix may be having its personal Coopersmith second, making humanoid avatars the subsequent invention to make the leap from the red-light district to Principal Avenue.
Realbotix’s product line has a spread of lifelike faces. Supply Realbotix.com
