Every time you think you’ve found the dumbest possible use for AI, there’s another publicly listed company already asking you to hold its entire keg of beer. This time, as reported by Mashable, it’s Realbotix, a firm that “designs AI-powered humanoid robots built for meaningful human interaction.” This would also be the Realbotix that was previously known as Tokens.com, a crypto company that has since pivoted to the latest fad, after purchasing sex doll maker Simulacra. Now wholly focused on “ultra-realistic humanoid robots and companionship-based AI,” the latest attention-seeking move is a claim to provide STEM-teaching AI-driven former sexbots to rural schools. I am not making any of this up.
Let’s untangle this in stages. RealDoll is the life-size sex doll brand created by then-Simulacra subsidiary Abyss Creations (no, I swear) as “ultrarealistic” sex dolls with detachable faces and removable vaginas, and that purport to have the “texture” of human bodies.
Tokens.com, meanwhile, was a Toronto-based crypto “liquidity gateway” that brought (deep sigh) “real-world assets into a single, regulated liquidity framework designed for clarity, access, and trust.”
These two households, both alike in dignity, met in 2024, and from forth the fatal loins of their union came Realbotix. Both star-cross’d lovers are attempting to pivot from their pasts in this merging, to form an AI-driven robotics company that is clearly desperate to find a niche beyond, you know, the obvious.
Cybersex-ed
Thus we arrive at this latest ridiculous suggestion: using the company’s “Optio AI” that it claims can function as a teacher’s assistant or at-home tutor, and sticking it in the robot brain of one of its still incredibly creepy-looking former sex dolls. The deadpan press release states of Optio, “Students interact with personalized avatars trained in district curriculum, delivering educationally regulated support, concept reinforcement, individual tutoring, and 24/7 homework support across multiple languages.” And now this will be combined with a Realbotix M-Series humanoid robot, “which uses natural conversation, facial expressions and real-time interaction to create engaging, hands-on learning experiences.”
Why do I feel like I’m typing out the opening premise of C-tier sci-fi movie?
This ludicrous stunt is being subjected upon Salamanca, New York, a city in Cattaraugus County, with a population of 5,929, and Seneca Nation land. And, as is the case with every single AI grift in existence, it’s being done not to actually help the widely impoverished people of Salamanca, but to try to promote the company’s AI. The giveaway line in the press release reads (our emphasis), “The platform provides scalable AI assistance for both students and educators while strengthening credibility for AI, robots, and STEM education.” There’s also the absolute bullshit line, “we anticipate benefits we cannot yet fully foresee.”
“Sally,” a brown-haired robo-lady, isn’t actually able to move around, so she’ll be sitting in a chair in a classroom as she directly interacts with children. According to New York Focus, the AI inside Sally will remember conversations it has had with children on previous days and be able to continue them, which both sounds like a dystopian nightmare and the most extraordinarily expensive use of AI tokens. Students will also have access to an “avatar” version of the software they can access at home to aid them with homework. And why is anyone letting this happen? Salamanca superintendent Mark Beehler told NY Focus, “Many schools are taking the easy solution of simply banning [AI], but I have found that students will find a way around most rules that schools put in place.” I cannot even get started on how flawed this logic is.
Worse, Realbotix is actually charging the district (where the median family household income is $30,996 and 22.2 percent of the population live below the poverty line) to provide it with this publicity. The district has spent $57,590 on this farce. But fear not, because Realbotix CEO Andrew Kiguel boasts to NY Focus that this is a discounted price, down from the standard $95,000. What an incredibly generous man. We’ve reached out to ask why the company is charging for its publicity stunt, and whether it has any evidence at all that an LLM-powered doll can meaningfully teach STEM to high school students.
Kick in the AI
This comes at a time when AI use in schools is already proving deeply problematic for teachers and students, even before you take the half-assed software and stick it in some leftover sex doll’s CPU. The idea that students would sit down and take these creepy-faced sexbots seriously is farcical, let alone that they would happily see human teachers replaced with them. I would worry about any class of kids who didn’t set one of these things on fire before pushing it out an upstairs window.
Realbotix claims that the Salamanca test targeting 500 students this fall is but the “flagship deployment” and only the start of a mass roll-out. It absolutely will not be. These pout-faced cumbots will be in zero classrooms for the whole rest of time. Either that, or they’ll turn on the students before eventually killing us all.
