I have to to be careful of what I say,” Andrew Conru, the founder and owner of Adult Friend Finder, tells me one morning in his corner office high above San Jose. Since he launched AFF in 1995, 
D. in mechanical engineering design from Stanford, Conru is among the smartest and most respected people in the online dating business
Despite the controversy, the company subsequently attempted to streamline its bot-creation process. Internal documents leaked during the Ashley Madison hack detail how, according to a 2013 email from managing director Keith Lalonde to then-CEO Noel Biderman, the company improved sex machine production for “building Angels enmass [sic].” This was done, Lalonde wrote, because the staff was getting “writers block when making them one at a time and were not being creative enough.” (Reps for Ashley Madison did not return requests for comment).
I n , the Federal Trade Commission took its first law enforcement action against sexbots when it fined JDI Dating, a UK-based owner of 18 dating sites including flirtcrowd and findmelove, $616,000 for assailing members with phony profiles. Though JDI labeled the sexbots’ profiles as “virtual cupids,” the FTC found this and other practices, such as automatic rebilling practices, to be deceptive.
In this case, the woman is wearing vibrating panties, which engage when our keyboard is clicked. There’s a male attachment too: a white tube with a peach-colored vibrating interior. It reacts as the person on the other end of the line controls it. “Go ahead and stick your finger in there,” Buckheit invites me, as the anatomical jelly mold buzzes. “There are going to be pros and cons about it,” he says, “but I think there is a world where people will want to play out sexual fantasies with as much realism as possible.” Even if the people screwing you are fake.
I have to to be careful of what I say,” Andrew Conru, the founder and owner of Adult Friend Finder, tells me one morning in his corner office high above San Jose. Since he launched AFF in 1995, he’s turned the site into a swinger-friendly empire that’s discreetly mainstream – boasting over 30 million members who pay $10 a month to find “sex hookups, online sex friends or hot fuck friends.” But while Conru has enough millions to retire several times over, he’s giving a rare interview to blow the whistle on the widespread use of sexbots in the business. “The only way you can compete with fraud is you let people know it’s fraud,” he tells me. “And it happens across the industry.”
D. in mechanical engineering design from Stanford, Conru is among the smartest and most respected people in the online dating business
Despite the controversy, the company subsequently attempted to streamline its bot-creation process. Internal documents leaked during the Ashley Madison hack detail how, according to a 2013 email from managing director Keith Lalonde to then-CEO Noel Biderman, the company improved sex machine production for “building Angels enmass [sic].” This was done, Lalonde wrote, because the staff was getting “writers block when making them one at a time and were not being creative enough.” (Reps for Ashley Madison did not return requests for comment).
I n , the Federal Trade Commission took its first law enforcement action against sexbots when it fined JDI Dating, a UK-based owner of 18 dating sites including flirtcrowd and findmelove, $616,000 for assailing members with phony profiles. Though JDI labeled the sexbots’ profiles as “virtual cupids,” the FTC found this and other practices, such as automatic rebilling practices, to be deceptive.
In this case, the woman is wearing vibrating panties, which engage when our keyboard is clicked. There’s a male attachment too: a white tube with a peach-colored vibrating interior. It reacts as the person on the other end of the line controls it. “Go ahead and stick your finger in there,” Buckheit invites me, as the anatomical jelly mold buzzes. “There are going to be pros and cons about it,” he says, “but I think there is a world where people will want to play out sexual fantasies with as much realism as possible.” Even if the people screwing you are fake.