In a plain factory building in the San Marcos hills, north of San Diego in California, a technological revolution is under way. There, a team of AI experts are developing a new brand of woman that can smile, flutter her eyelids, make small-talk and remember the names of your siblings. Harmony – for that is her name – is a cut above your average sex doll. More than merely a masturbatory aid, she is a friend, lover and potential life partner. In Sex Robots & Vegan Meat, Jenny Kleeman examines the innovations that promise to change the way we love, eat, reproduce and die in the future. "What you are about to read is not science fiction," she warns in her preface.

In his monthly column, Brian Gray from Glasgow-based consultancy Lascivious Marketing offers his thoughts on all things marketing…and perhaps one or two other things. This month he plays Devil's Advocate to the sex robot detractors. Oscar Wilde famously opined that he could resist everything but temptation. Opinion pieces with questionable arguments have the same effect on me. The British newspaper The Guardian published an article on Monday 25th September written by "robotics expert" Jenny Kleeman, titled "Should we ban sex robots while we have the chance?" The sub-heading posits: "AI sex dolls are on their way, with potentially sinister social consequences.

Harmony is a prototype, a robotic version of the company's hyper-realistic silicone sex toy, the RealDoll,