Love and Sex with Robots began to attract serious interest as an academic subject in 1983, when Dr. Neil Frude remarked in his book, The Intimate Machine, that:​“Computer technology offers new possibilities in sexual stimulation, and since pornography merchants have never been slow to exploit new techniques for their industry, we can anticipate that the new potential will be thoroughly explored.”

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The year following Dr. Frude's publication saw the birth of another ground-breaking book – The Second Self, by Dr. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT.  Her research for that book was an investigation into the likely future effects of computers on society, on which she wrote:​“We search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become.”

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In the book, Dr. Turkle quoted an MIT student, of whom she had asked how he felt about his computer. When I first read it, in 2003, that student’s reply hit me like a thunderbolt. He said that he had “tried having girlfriends but I prefer my relationship with my computer”. This quirky answer, dating back to the early 1980s, caused me to wonder to what extent such feelings existed two decades later, when computers were far more widespread than they had been in the early 80s. Had feelings of affection for computers become just as commonplace? Thus I was drawn to this challenging topic – intimate and loving relationships with robots.

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My interest in this topic developed into a book, for which Love and Sex with Robots seemed like an ideal title. While I was in the process of researching and writing the book I discovered that a symposium on a new academic subject – Roboethics – had taken place in San Remo, Italy, in January 2004. I was invited by those who had organized that symposium to speak at a follow-up conference – the EURON Roboethics “Atelier”, in Genoa, in February 2006.  There I gave three talks, all based on my research material which had yet to be published. The following year I presented at the ICRA Workshop on Roboethics in Rome, which formed part of the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Robotics and Automation. By virtue of the IEEE hosting the Roboethics workshop and its constituent parts, our subject had truly arrived as an accepted discipline on the academic scene.

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As my book Love and Sex with Robots neared completion, I was invited by the University of Maastricht to submit an academic version of my research as a PhD thesis, with the slightly more conservative title “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners”. On the day of my thesis defense there was a flurry of interest from Dutch media; such a strong flurry that the university was happy to organize a conference the following year devoted entirely to the subject. As a result, for 2008, 2009 and 2010, the Netherlands played host to the International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships, the proceedings of which were published by Springer. Having Springer publish those proceedings further enhanced the credentials of our subject as an academic discipline.

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In 2011, we started a new academic conference: The International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots.​ The gathering was a success in terms of the number of attendees (around 40), and because it provided further endorsement by academia of Love and Sex with Robots as an appropriate academic research discipline. The first conference in this new series took place soon afterwards in Funchal, Madeira and hosted by the University of Madeira.

 

For the following year, 2015, we planned to hold the conference in Iskandar, at the southern tip of Malaysia. However, about two weeks before the conference was due to begin, disaster struck. The Malaysian Minister for Tourism suddenly discovered that the conference was scheduled to take place and found this offensicve to Malaysian culture. The Kuala Lumpur Chief of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar, called a press conference where he described the event as “ridiculous”, adding that there is “nothing scientific about having sex with machines. It is not our culture. We can take action against the organizer if they choose to hold the event”. We were at risk of prosecution and unfortunately had no alternative but to postpone the second International Conference on Love and Sex with Robots to the following year.

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Goldsmiths University in London proved an ideal venue for the second iteration. Hosting at Goldsmith added further academic credentials to the conference that took place in December 2016. All local arrangements were made by Dr. Kate Devlin, who subsequently authored the book Turned On: Science Sex and Robots.

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The second conference was such a success that we initially decided to return to Goldsmiths for the third, in December 2017. An innovation at the third conference was the inauguration of a “best paper” award in my name, which was presented to a Belgian PhD student.

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The fourth conference had been due to take place in 2018 in Montana, USA but also had to be postponed.  Fortunately, a PhD student kindly offered to take on the organization of the postponed fourth in the series, which duly took place in Brussels at the beginning of July 2019. It was a brilliantly organized event, very much enjoyed by all who attended, and in my opinion the best in the series so far.

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For the fifth in the series, in the process of discussing the next location, when the decisions were taken out of our hands by COVID-19. It was a case of “all hands on deck” to find a viable alternative, and in common with most other international conferences, we resolved to make that year’s event a virtual conference. Thanks to the efforts of Bobbi Bidochka, and Dr. Simon Dubé, we successfully delivered the conference on Zoom from Montreal, and so we repeated the format until August 2024 when we returned to an in-person event, held in Montreal hosted by The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

 

Building on our successes of the past years, the organizing committee is, more than ever, committed to delivering a world-class event, with the aim of continuously improving the quality of the LSR conference and organization.

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In August 2025, we celebrated our 10th Anniversary and again holding the conference in Montreal, at The Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

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Click here for Past Proceedings

 

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