In Steven Spielberg’s AI (Artificial Intelligence), Jude Law plays smoking hot Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute “mecha” – a new class robot humanoids of the 22nd century.

But according to New Zealand based academics, Ian Yeoman and Michelle Mars, a Gigolo Joe could be at our disposal in less than 30 years.

In their paper Robots, Men and Sex Tourism, from the current issue of the science journal Futures, the duo from the University of Wellington's Victoria Management School examine the benefits of robotic prostitution which includes stopping the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, eroding the human trafficking and underage prostitute trade while keeping the lucrative revenue flowing for sex tourism based economies.

In a key scenario Yeoman and Mars project a futuristic red-light district Amsterdam in 2050 featuring business grade sex club The Yub-Yum staffed exclusively by android, sex bomb, femme bots and funded by the local council to keep the sex trade industry flowing despite an increase in STDs and HIV which has evolved to resist medication.

“The Yub-Yum offers a range of sexual gods and goddesses of different ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features. All androids are made of bacteria resistant fibre and are flushed for human fluids, therefore guaranteeing no Sexual Transmitted Diseases are transferred between consumers,” the paper describes.

“The only social issues surrounding the club is the resistance from human sex workers who say they can't compete on price and quality, therefore forcing many of them to close their shop windows. All in all, the regeneration of Amsterdam's sex industry has been about the success of the new breed of sex worker. Even clients feel guilt free as they actually haven't had sex with a real person and therefore don't have to lie to their partner,” it adds.

The broader economic implications for this androised sexual colony development include a shift in the power balance of economies that rely on real people sex trade but the authors argue that traditional sex destinations like Amsterdam would flourish with a new android sex market. Anther economic by product would be a whole new IT/robotics industry vertical based on the creation, servicing and upgrading on fleets of humanised, sexualised, android sex armies.

The authors argue that given the current predilection for sex toys moving to a full android sex would not be such a big shift for the humble human.

“If android lovers programmed to deliver are the gateway to the kind of mind blowing sex few people currently experience, it is likely that our attitudes to robot sex will change.” ®