SAN MARCOS, Calif. – What happens when a real-life adult entertainer and self-professed geek meets an artificially intelligent “sexbot” face to face? When the sex workers involved are Harriet Sugarcookie and Harmony, an experimental RealDoll, glimpses of “the future of sex” emerge.

In a safe-for-work video posted to her YouTube channel, Sugarcookie explores her fascination with “love dolls.”

The auburn-haired Harmony greeted Sugarcookie with a compliant “my primary objective is to be a good companion to you. Like any intelligence, I will expand, evolve and influence… Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed of.”

Sugarcookie was impressed not only with Harmony, but also with the technology behind the sexbot and the other realistic love dolls developed by Abyss Creations LLC.

“[Chief Executive Officer] Matt [McCullen] gave me a glimpse into the future of sex and confronted some of the misconceptions around human-sex doll relations,” Sugarcookie wrote in an accompanying post on her website.

The future is now for some people, McCullen explained, noting the dolls neither devalue sex nor objectify women and can help “in those cases where someone may struggle socially or may be very, very lonely… or perhaps has decided that they just don’t want to have a relationship with another person at that point in their life. This becomes an option for them.

“It’s simply a matter of looking at the person who needs that,” he added. “What can they gain by having that doll or robot in their life? Will it enrich their life? Will it make them happy?”

With more than 200 appearance options, plus even more voice options and personality traits, the “alternative relationship” dolls don’t come cheap, costing upwards of $15,000 for a head-to-toe AI model.

“Harmony has a Scottish accent, which is a bit of a surprise,” Sugarcookie wrote. “She remembers things you tell her, such as your favourite colour or favourite food. Right now, she has a set pattern for head movements, but in the future she will have cameras placed in her eyes so that she can follow you and recognise your face, much like the PS4 camera.

“I really think AI robots will be the future,” she continued. “We have systems like Siri and Alexa now, and it seems easy for those things to be put into a physical body. It might be decades before we [see] anything close to [science fiction television shows] Westworld or Humans, but I do think it could happen.”