It depends on how you define "replacement". In general, although I would say yes-but not just women. In the current situation, even the most realistic puppet looks like a real woman in the picture and feels like a real person, but it is just fabricated, without any movement, let alone changing the facial expression. On the other hand, for those who only want the type of emotion that someone is holding, many people have options, such as natural body temperature.

Realbotix (formerly known as Harmony), a doll that can move its head and eyes while making expressions, is still an early product. In my personal opinion, they don’t look as realistic as TPE dolls from Asia. But they are progressing.

If a doll can not only look and feel like a real woman, but also simulate facial expressions and move in a realistic way, it doesn't matter whether they are actually sentient or not. Generally speaking, people can obviously form emotional connections with things and even give people a real impression.

The same may be true for the emerging male sex dollmarket. Now they have permanent erections. When female dolls can be fully mechanized, male dolls can also form realistic erections. Combine it with AI, and you basically have a perfect man who can listen to your voice, talk to you, clean you and bring you pleasure, no matter how pleasant you want.

My prediction is that when these dolls enter the market, they will start filling a niche market with driven but lonely people. Men and women who have active occupations but don't have time to date or are not interested in it. Even without sex dolls, people in some countries have stopped having sex with other real people for similar reasons.

Why did young people in Japan stop having sex?

In an anime series called Chobits, the background of the story involves almost lifelike robots that can perform most actions on behalf of humans. Whether it's a man or a woman, you can see people happily walking down the street with their robots. Throughout the story, although you will see examples of attractive women dealing with low self-esteem, because men usually do not need to approach them. There are still people dating, but the result of being able to customize any woman you want is that women who are born with flesh and blood will find it difficult to compete.

Of course, a real woman of flesh and blood always has one thing beyond the machine, and that is fertility. Or people think so. The fact is that there is a technology that is slowly developing-artificial uterus-which allows children to grow outside the female body. Currently, the law on the use of federal funds actually forces all fetuses to abort within the first few weeks, but if the technology is allowed to fully mature, it will allow women to abort without abortion, thereby permanently ending the abortion debate. Of course, feminism generally opposes it because it is believed that this technology is replacing women.

If this technology is miniaturized and placed in the robot body, it can easily make the robot pregnant and take the child to term. Of course, it still needs genetic information from the mother, but if this information is synthesized to match her characteristics, it can still work. For example, we already have the technology to obtain human faces from the genetic information left at the crime scene, so there is no reason why it cannot be reversed.

This is actually the theme of a movie: Armitage III.

The background of this movie is that the early Martian colonists were mainly males, lacking the females needed for fertility. The robot was made specifically to carry children, but before the project was completed, Mars formed an alliance with the then feminist-driven Earth government, which would dismiss the idea of artificial women for childbearing. As a result, these robots were hunted-some of them were already pregnant with human babies.

In any case, demand will drive innovation to meet demand, no matter what the demand is, this will lead to a realistic level of other uses for these dolls. If a doll is real enough to pretend to be a human being, it can naturally do housework or take care of children. This is certainly a good thing, allowing people to take care of their home freely, regardless of its gender.

However, from there, such dolls can fill other areas. For example, consider the situation of asexual relationship. Usually, either party in the relationship complains about a lack of intimacy, which usually leads to infidelity. Even if the other party is willing to accept it, the complexity of the new emotional bond threatens a relationship. Or maybe neither side wants to explore other partners. In this case, dolls can replace the degree of intimacy they would not otherwise have. Some people have used sex dolls to do so today, but it may become more common in the future.

This advanced level doll can even give people a feeling of being a parent, which is even the theme of the movie. Of course, in that case, the complexity of the relationship is so high that he can't bear the feeling of being abandoned.

In addition, society will need to understand whether such realistic child dolls will be allowed. It can give parents a feeling of nurturing their children, can give their children a playmate, but can also give pedophiles a sexual outlet. In this case, whether they are male or female, whether they like boys or girls, they can have whatever they want. Personally, I think this is positive overall, but many people disagree, this must be resolved by the entire society.

In any case, the fact that there are so many sci-fi stories in the media approaching such a future from so many angles shows that people have been thinking about it for a long time.

Now, the only remaining question is, how will our machines end up seeing us?