
Sex, Robots and Us
Samantha is an AI-powered sex doll built by a husband-and-wife team, packed with animatronic reflexes and lifelike silicone skin, and the film follows her crating and shipment to a brothel in Australia. The BBC crew uses her as the entry point into a wider industry: manufacturers refining interaction software so dolls can hold basic conversation, brothel operators weighing the economics of robotic staff against human ones, and buyers explaining, often with visible discomfort, what draws them to a synthetic partner. Engineers and psychologists sit alongside them, debating what the technology says about loneliness, consent, and the changing shape of intimacy as AI gets better at faking responsiveness. The film does not sensationalize the dolls themselves so much as sit with the people who make, sell, and use them, letting their justifications and doubts speak for the industry. It closes without resolving whether this is a niche curiosity or an early version of something much bigger.