Earlier this year, Microsoft added a new key to Windows keyboards for the first time since 1994. Before the news dropped, your mind might’ve raced with the possibilities and potential usefulness of a new addition. However, the button ended up being a Copilot launcher button that doesn’t even work in an innovative way.
Logitech announced a new mouse last week. I was disappointed to learn that the most distinct feature of the Logitech Signature AI Edition M750 is a button located south of the scroll wheel. This button is preprogrammed to launch the ChatGPT prompt builder, which Logitech recently added to its peripherals configuration app Options+.
Similarly to Logitech, Nothing is trying to give its customers access to ChatGPT quickly. In this case, access occurs by pinching the device. This month, Nothing announced that it "integrated Nothing earbuds and Nothing OS with ChatGPT to offer users instant access to knowledge directly from the devices they use most, earbuds and smartphones."
In the gaming world, for example, MSI announced this year a monitor with a built-in NPU and the ability to quickly show League of Legends players when an enemy from outside of their field of view is arriving.
Another example is AI Shark's vague claims. This year, it announced technology that brands could license in order to make an "AI keyboard," "AI mouse," "AI game controller" or "AI headphones." The products claim to use some unspecified AI tech to learn gaming patterns and adjust accordingly.
Despite my pessimism about the droves of AI marketing hype, if not AI washing, likely to barrage the next couple of years of tech announcements, I have hope that consumer interest and common sense will yield skepticism that stops some of the worst so-called AI gadgets from getting popular or misleading people.
Looking through the hardware compatibility list on buttplug.io, one such device is the "Edge-o-Matic 3000". This claims to keep a user near orgasm without actually having an orgasm. For that to work, there have to be sensors, and fairly reactive to arousal in the short term. It looks like they're using a pneumatic pressure sensor driven off a bulb in a user's butt to measure muscle contractions, and are trying to link that to arousal.
https://maustec.io/collections/sex-tech/products/eom3k?variant=40191648432306
If they're trying to have software learn to recognize a relationship between muscle contractions and arousal sufficient to produce orgasm, if it's automatic rather than having someone tweaking variables, that's machine learning. Maybe "AI" is a bit pretentious, but it'd be a sex toy doing machine learning today.
That's an interesting idea, but:
I'm dubious that it actually works well. It's described as being a work in progress.
Even if it works and solves the problem they're trying to solve (being able to reliably predict orgasm), I'm not sure that muscle contractions can be used to predict arousal more-broadly.
My guess is that as sensors go, mandating that someone have an inflatable bulb up their butt to let the sensor get readings is kind of constraining; not everyone is going to want that at all, much less when they're, well, playing with sex toys. Their butt might be otherwise-occupied.
That being said, it's gotta at least be viable enough for someone to have been willing to put work into and commercialize a device based on that input. I'd believe that muscle contractions are an input that one could reasonably derive data from that one could train a machine on.
Maybe one could use brainwaves as an input. That'd avoid physical delay. I've got no idea how or if that links to arousal, but I've seen inexpensive, noninvasive sensors before that log it. Using biofeedback off those was trendy in the 1970s or something, had people putting out products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography
At least according to this paper, sexual arousal does produce a unique signature:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01547-3
If it's primitive enough, probably similar across people, easier to train a meter to measure arousal from EEG data on one set of people that can be used on others.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009130571400032X
That sounds promising.
There's an open EEG product at two channels without headband for 99 EUR.
https://www.olimex.com/Products/EEG/OpenEEG/EEG-SMT/open-source-hardware
Some more-end-user-oriented headsets exist.
https://imotions.com/blog/learning/product-guides/eeg-headset-prices/
Hmm. Though psychologists have to have wanted to measure sexual arousal for research. You'd think that if EEGs were the best route, they'd have done that, else physical changes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2050052115301414
Hmm. That's measuring physical changes, not the brain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginal_photoplethysmograph
That doesn't sound like, even concerns about responsiveness in time aside, existing methods for measuring arousal from physical changes in the body are all that great.
As in, maybe measuring the brain is gonna be a better route, if it's practical.