Sex Robots: The End of Love

This review examines Sex Robots: The End of Love, in which Kathleen Richardson presentsa radical feminist critique of sex robots and the sexual exploitation industries of pornography,prostitution, and child sexual abuse. Centred on the pronominal philosophies of the egocentric I, the undifferentiated we, and the I-you attachment, Richardson argues that these industries and the representational technologies that emerge from them are grounded in property relations, dissociation, and the erosion of mutuality. In assessing her analysis, this review outlines the conceptual foundations of the pronominal framework and evaluates its application across the three industries. Richardson’s arguments against pornography, prostitution, and child sexual abuse are powerful and ethically urgent as they reframe sex robots as technological amplifications of systems already built on domination. However, empirical research on feminist, queer, and LGBTQ+ uses ofpornography, as well as human-rights-based perspectives on sex work, raises questions regarding the breadth of some of her universal claims. Despite this, Richardson’s reframing of sex robots as extensions of exploitative sexual economies offers an important and timely intervention into contemporary discussions of intimacy and technology across AI ethics and feminist theory.