Members of the New Scientist Book Club give their take on Sierra Greer's award-winning science-fiction novel Annie Bot, our read for February - and the needle swings wildly from positive to negative Annie Bot by Sierra Greer was the Book Club's January read The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December - Iain M. Banks's - to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer's, which won the Arthur C. Clarke prize in 2025. I must admit, I was nervous to announce this one to my fellow readers. is the story of a sex robot, owned by a controlling and abusive man. It gets very dark in places, it has a number of sex scenes, and I wanted to make sure you all knew what you were getting into before getting started. That cupboard scene, some way into the book, was super disturbing, for example. It turns out my wariness was warranted.

Alex Garland's 2015 film Ex Machina and Sierra Greer's Annie Bot (pictured below) follow a long tradition of female robots This year's Arthur C. Clarke award for the year's best science fiction novel was awarded last month to Sierra Greer's Annie Bot. Over the course of the novel, Annie, a sentient sex robot programmed to adore her selfish owner, gradually develops a sense of personhood – but she is hardly the first artificial woman to do so. Although the earliest fictional female robots were little more than wind-up toys, they have steadily gained substance until more recent artificial women, like Annie, have become as complex as their human counterparts. Artificial people are both ancient and ubiquitous. "Basically every culture around the world since recorded history has told stories about automatons," says Lisa Yaszek at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The discussion around the problematic practice of gendering humanoid robots has risen to the foreground in the last few years. To lay the basis for a thorough understanding of how robot's "gender" has been understood within the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) community - i.e., how it has been manipulated, in which contexts, and which effects it has yield on people's perceptions and interactions with robots - we performed a scoping review of the literature. We identified 553 papers relevant for our review retrieved from 5 different databases. The final sample of reviewed papers included 35 papers written between 2005 and 2021, which involved a total of 3902 participants. In this article, we thoroughly summarize these papers by reporting information about their objectives and assumptions on gender (i.e., definitions and reasons to manipulate gender), their manipulation of robot's "gender" (i.e., gender cues and manipulation checks), their experimental designs (e.g., demographics of participants, employed robots), and their results (i.e., main and interaction effects). The review reveals that robot's "gender" does not affect crucial constructs for the HRI, such as likability and acceptance, but rather bears its strongest effect on stereotyping. We leverage our different epistemological backgrounds in Social Robotics and Gender Studies to provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary perspective on the results of the review and suggest ways to move forward in the field of HRI.

Illustration depicting a "female humanoid robot". After drawing with colored pencils, details were drawn in Photoshop.

With the proliferation of female robots such as Sophia and the popularity of female virtual assistants such as Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), and Cortana (Microsoft), artificial intelligence seems to have a gender issue. This gender imbalance in AI is a pervasive trend that has drawn sharp criticism in the media (even Unesco warned against the dangers of this practice) because it could reinforce stereotypes about women being objects. But why is femininity injected in artificial intelligent objects? If we want to curb the massive use of female gendering in AI, we need to better understand the deep roots of this phenomenon. In an article published in the journal Psychology & Marketing, we argue that research on what makes people human can provide a new perspective into why feminization is systematically used in AI.

A new £8,000 ($11,000) robot called Henry not only boasts'superhuman sexual performance', but he's also apparently good at cracking jokes. At 6ft tall with a rippling six-pack and brooding dark looks, this droid can also welcome his owner home and discuss their favourite TV show or film, creators say. He can even woo them with romantic phrases and words to their favourite love poem or song. Costing between £8,000 and £11,000 ($11,000 – $15,600) depending on optional extras – he is the world's first'companion' robot aimed at females. An new £8,000 ($11,000) robot called Henry (pictured) not only boasts'superhuman sexual performance' but he's apparently good at cracking jokes too Every part of him can be built to order – including the size and shape of his manhood – though the developers have not yet found a way of making that part fully robotic.

Since the Know Your Rights app was released last year, it's been downloaded tens of thousands of times. It's official: a robot has become a citizen of a country for the first time ever. On Wednesday, during the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Sophia Robot from the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics was deemed a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Sophia is kind of a big deal, largely because the robot appears highly advanced. She served as a speaker during the event, and has given interviews to Charlie Rose and Good Morning Britain. "I am very honored and proud for this very unique distinction," said Sophia.

The first episode of HBO's Westworld heavily implied that a terrified robot was being raped -- and not for the first time either. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), a 30-year-old automaton that thinks it's a 30-year-old woman, cries and begs and screams. But there are people who go in for this sort of thing. Porn sharing communities often call rape-themed videos "struggle porn" or hide behind neologisms like "painal." The ones that focus on robots are more forward than that because there is no crime implied.

It may be many men's dream to have Scarlett Johansson tend to their every need. But one man has come close to making this fantasy a reality by building a look-a-like robot. He now plans on sharing his designs in a handbook, so other fans can create their own sexy androids too. The life-size robot was created by Hong Kong designer Ricky Ma, based on a famous Hollywood actress. A 3D-printed skeleton lies beneath Mark 1's silicone skin, wrapping its mechanical and electronic parts.

Robots can keep their parts and still change their gender, according to Penn State researchers, who noted that the arrival of robots with screens has made it easier to assign distinct personalities. In a study, people found that feminine cues on the robot's screen were enough to convince them that a robot was female, said Eun Hwa Jung, a doctoral student in mass communications. The findings may help robot developers economically customize robots for certain roles and to serve certain populations. "We changed the gender cues -- male or female -- on two different locations: the robot body and the robot's screen," said Jung. "The screen, by itself, helped participants perceive whether the robot was male or female." Robot makers may not need to alter the robot's shape or features to meet users' expectations and preferences, said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, who worked with Jung.