You could be looking at the ultra-realistic and creepy future of sex dolls. A new'companion robot' made its debut at a major tech event in Vegas this week, sporting perfectly shaped breasts, a pert buttocks, thick lips and features of a youthful 20-something. Its creators, Realbotix, claim the 175,000 bot is to keep elderly gentlemen from being lonely. Asked why it had been shaped in an appealing way, the creators said it was because men wanted something nice to look at. Dressed in a black tracksuit, when asking the robot questions it gives long responses while having slightly jerky hand and body movements.

Well, not literally, not yet anyway -- but that'll be happening soon enough with further advances in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to the point that you will no longer be able to distinguish whether or not your sexbot was having an actual simulated orgasm or just faking it. For those of you who haven't made it past first base in the world of sexual machines and are asking, "Sexbot? A "sexbot" is a robot designed for humans to have sexual intercourse with. It is a machine engineered for sexual simulation and stimulation. If this sounds a bit mechanical and crass, it's because, well, it sort of is. That being said, a major facet of human sexual intercourse is mechanical -- so much so that prescribing tool analogies to our descriptions of it have become part of our popular cultural lexicon. But please, don't drill me on the particulars. While there are deep emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions to human sexuality, it is, at its core, a very physical action. Most of us were forged in the crucible of that act, excepting the small percentage (about 2 percent in the U.S.) of embryos conceived using in vitro fertilization. My purpose here is not to pass judgement on people's sex lives nor their preferences or fetishes nor wade into the morass of a sexual morality debate. As a technologist, it's my obligation to inform you that sexbots are a rapidly emerging technology that will have a profound impact upon the future of human sexual relations with the integration of increasingly life-like robots into the fabric of everyday human life. While sexbots are a fairly new phenomenon, the existence of man-made sexual devices has been around for tens of thousands of years, beginning with the artificial phallus, the oldest of which was discovered in Germany in 2005. Made of siltstone and measuring in at 7.8" in length, it is estimated to be 28,000 years old.

Chances are, you're exposed to artificial intelligence every day. And artificial intelligence has been the cause of many of the technological breakthroughs in the past several years - from robots to Tesla (TSLA) . But while there are certainly naysayers to the technological development, AI seems set to become the future of predictive tech. But, what actually is artificial intelligence, and how does it work? Better still, how is AI being used in 2019?

Last year, CNET traveled to San Marcos, California, for an early, behind-the-scenes look at a new generation of artificially intelligent sex robots from Abyss Creations, maker of the popular "RealDolls" line of customizable sex dolls. Now, customers can expect to start receiving those same sexbots within the next month. So says Abyss Creations founder and chief designer Matthew McMullen in a recent video interview with a RealDoll enthusiast and Harmony beta tester who goes by "Brick Dollbanger." In the interview, McMullen says fully equipped AI sex robots should start shipping in September, which matches what a spokesperson for Abyss Creations subsidiary Realbotix told me earlier this week. McMullen also said putting the final touches on his company's new creations has proven to be "a little more difficult than we anticipated."

Gone are the days of sex dolls that barely resemble the human form and have less-than-appealing features. Today's models are fully customisable and will soon come with artificial intelligence. Australian sexologist Dr Nikki Goldstein visited Los Angeles to explore a factory which specialises in the making of these new-age dolls. There she met the creators of'Harmony' and'Henry' - a breed of doll that has the makings of a robot and is AI-enhanced. 'Fundamentally [the doll] is for someone who is looking for a different form of companionship - that really summarises what most people have in their mind when they start looking at this,' said Matt McMullen on Sex & Life, Dr Goldstein's podcast.

Kroger and Nuro executives said delivering groceries without drivers--while still years away--would make such services cheaper and easier to introduce in less densely populated parts of the country. Nearly a third of 4,504 adults surveyed by Forrester Analytics earlier this year said they didn't do more grocery shopping online because of costs including delivery charges. "We are not trying to be a dollar cheaper than regular delivery. We are trying to be an order of magnitude cheaper," said Dave Ferguson, who helped lead Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s GOOGL 0.21% self-driving vehicle arm before co-founding Mountain View, Calif.-based Nuro in 2016. The Nuro partnership is the third deal Kroger has made in the past two months that aims to aid in how it sells to customers as competitors Amazon.com

And for people worried their jobs might soon be gone, that might be scary -- but the threat could actually be much worse. It might affect our entire race. The modern-day dolls that not only look like women but have a similar feel, and they react like real people in conversations too. For those who find it's too hard to form a real relationship, will they just turn to a robot as a long-term solution? Armed with questions and recording equipment, my fear took me to Realbotixs in San Diego to meet Harmony, a robot with artificial intelligence (and a working vagina).

The day I'm scheduled to appear on his show, the television physician and Oprah protege has assembled a cast of victims and villains that includes a college communications major who caught chlamydia from a Tinder date; a 24-year-old woman who was stabbed 21 times by the fiance she met online; and Douglas Hines, a cartoonish engineer donning a white lab coat and outsize bowtie, who claims to have created the world's first sex robot. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. I'm here, presumably, to act as a voice of reason in a segment called "Rise of the sex robots: Why experts are issuing warnings!" My co-panelists, a sex therapist and a psychologist, are well-trained in the art (or is it science?) of near-scripted debate. While one is slightly more optimistic, their arguments are essentially two sides of the same coin: Sex robots either can or will pose a threat to human relationships, or worse. As TV doctors do, they've both developed firmly planted opinions on the subject without any first-hand experience. It's not lost on me that I'm the only one in the room who's actually seen a sex robot IRL. After the doctors deliver their warnings, Oz turns to me, a look of concern written in deep lines across his forehead. He wants to know if people can have real, intimate relationships with robots.

Ocado, the UK leader in home-delivered groceries from robot-run distribution centers, has established a licensing deal with US grocery chain Kroger (NYSE:KR) whereby Kroger will take a 5% stake in Ocado – an investment valued at $247.5 million and Ocado will help Kroger set up systems to manage online ordering, fulfillment and delivery operations utilizing Ocado-proven technologies. Ocado will see the Kroger chain build up to 20 Ocado-designed robot-run warehouses over its first three years. In a recent letter to Kroger stockholders, CEO Rodney McMullen said that Kroger is redeploying capital to emphasize improving its digital capabilities and enabling customers to shop in the store, by ordering online and picking up their order at the store, or getting their groceries delivered to their homes. Although McMullen didn't single out Amazon or any other competitors in the supermarket arena, Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods and Walmart's price-cutting moves and partnering with online grocery deliver service Instacart are rapidly changing the landscape of grocery shopping. "Kroger is right in the middle of such a reinvention," McMullen said in the shareholder letter.

I'm driving down the San Diego freeway, searching for my exit, feeling jumpy and a little bit lost. I'm hoping a few wrong turns early in my drive won't make me late. I still need time to stop off at a strip mall with a Starbucks and a big parking lot -- someplace I can put on deodorant and maybe a little makeup after my cross-country flight. I prefer to think this is because I want to appear professional to the human man I'm on my way to see: Matt McMullen, the founder of Abyss Creations and its offshoot robotics company, Realbotix. But once I find a place to park and start brushing my hair, I realize that some deranged sliver of myself feels as if I'm primping for romance. This is a complicated realization. In addition to McMullen, I'm about to meet Henry, the first available male sex robot. Henry is six feet tall, with six-pack abs and the customer's choice of penis. He's just a prototype at the moment -- you can't buy him -- but the two female models Realbotix developed alongside Henry will ship this summer. So far, there have been 50 preorders at $12,000 apiece. Henry, Harmony, and Solana have sturdy silicone bodies, and once they're synced up to a corresponding app, they can give compliments, recite poetry, tell jokes, and seduce.