Christopher Trout

    Former Editor-in-Chief

  • The truth about sex robots: Panic, pleasure and a candlelit dinner

    Dr. Oz isn't happy about the future of sex. 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.

  • A fond farewell to our sister sites in Germany and Spain

    When I started at Engadget in 2010, I saw the site as an opportunity: a publication with millions of readers that would pay me to write for a living. After months of rigorous training and countless hours spent in IRC with some of the most genuine and intelligent people I'd ever met, I started to see Engadget as a family, a global community of passionate, creative writers and editors who truly care about their audience and their work. Sadly, the Engadget community is about to get a little bit smaller. Starting tomorrow, Engadget's German- and Spanish-language sites will cease publication. While we are sad to see them go, this isn't the end of the road. The writers and editors at both sites will go on to do great things and their archives will live on here at Engadget.com. Engadget.com and our sister sites in China, Japan and the UK will continue to bring you the world's best technology news and reviews. I won't dwell on what brought us here. Instead, I'll just say thank you. To our readers, our writers, our editors and our friends in Spain and Germany, it has been a wild ride. Your passion and dedication won't be forgotten. They say nothing lasts forever, but we'll always have IRC. Good luck out there!

  • Don’t call it a dildo: Kiiroo and OhMiBod on the future of sex toys

    CES may have a complicated relationship with sex, but one company at the world's largest technology conference has made it its mission to destigmatize doing it. For the past seven years, the family-run sex-toy manufacturer OhMiBod has made the trek to Las Vegas in an attempt to gain mainstream distribution for its line of tech-savvy pleasure products. This year, the company has partnered with one of the leaders in interactive sex toys, Kiiroo, to create an internet-connected vibrator that can communicate with the Fleshlight-branded Launch male masturbator. OhMiBod's Fuse claims to be the first of its kind to offer bi-directional control -- basically, allowing either the stroker or the vibrator to send sensations to the other device from long distances. Both devices also promise to sync with VR and traditional porn and can be used by webcam models to give their clients an extra-sensory experience. The Fuse can be purchased online, and you can see the devices for yourself at the Las Vegas Convention Center's South hall through the remainder of CES. The Kiiroo Launch is now available for $220 and the OhMiBod Fuse can be had for $150. I sat down with Kiiroo founder Toon Timmermans and OhMiBod's Suki and Brian Dunham at CES 2018 to talk about the future of long-distance love and learned a lesson in interactive sex-toy branding: Whatever you do, don't call it a dildo!

  • There’s a new sex robot in town: Say hello to Solana

    It's been just short of a year since I locked eyes with Harmony, RealDoll's first sex robot, at her home in Southern California. It was an arresting experience that has remained cemented in memory. In that moment, I suddenly understood the uncanny valley, a theory posited by roboticist Masahiro Mori, nearly half a century prior. It attempts to explain the feeling of revulsion and eeriness that human onlookers experience when they encounter an artificial life-form that appears nearly, but not quite human.

  • BDSM 2.0: Castration and extortion in the digital age

    It's a mild but muggy September day in Beverly Hills, California, when Harley and I meet at her new neighborhood nail salon. Today, the 6-foot-tall Silicon Valley expatriate is dressed in a leatherlike jumpsuit so short and low-cut that it feels like a mere suggestion of clothing. A shock of magenta hair frames the constellation of stars tattooed across her left temple. Her unnaturally plump lips are so glossy and brightly colored they almost look lacquered. She wears platform boots to accentuate her already-imposing frame. An assortment of colorful, outsize tattoos runs the length of her seemingly infinite limbs. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

  • 'Dance with flARmingos' in a mixed reality mating ritual

    Flamingos rule everything around her. Her clothes are covered in them. Her workspace is littered with representations of their spindly legs and hot-pink plumes. She's spent hours studying their migratory patterns, mating rituals and native environments. She's traveled the world speaking to conservationists and ornithologists to better understand them. She even adopted 20 of the winged icons to aid in her research and their preservation.

  • A mirror exposes AI’s inherent flaws in ‘Untrained Eyes’

    In July 2015, Google's public-relations machine was in full-on crisis mode. Earlier that year, the search giant announced Photos, an AI-driven app that used machine-learning to automatically tag and organize your pictures based on the people, places and things depicted in them. It was an exciting step forward, but Photos wasn't perfect. While the app was capable of recognizing some faces, it mistook others. It would have been easy to pass this off as a routine software bug if it weren't for the nature of the failure.

  • ‘Dinner Party’ relives an interracial couple’s alien abduction in VR

    On the night of September 19th, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were the victims of the first widely publicized alien abduction in US history. The Hills, an interracial couple active in the civil-rights movement, were on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls when they noticed an unusual light in the sky. Shaken by the erratic behavior of the UFO, they headed in the direction of the closest town but never made it.

  • 'Your Hands Are Feet' puts you inside a psychedelic egg yolk

    Sarah Rothberg is obsessed with the bright-red silicone sponge she bought at Sur La Table. As a sponge, it's worthless -- it's too flimsy to be abrasive, and you can forget about it absorbing liquid -- but when you rub its tiny bristles together the sound is strangely familiar. It's the sound of shaving a giant's leg.

  • What to expect from the Engadget Experience, our immersive art + tech event

    New mediums like augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence are pushing the boundaries of art, entertainment, gaming and performance -- but immersive media isn't always accessible. For one day only, we invite you to experience what happens at the outer limits of creativity. The first Engadget Experience is set to bring together some of the brightest minds in technology, art and entertainment next month, and we want you to be there. The agenda is nearly complete, and we're proud to say it's going to be a killer show.

  • Nonny de la Peña, Eugene Chung illuminate the Engadget Experience

    Virtual reality captured the mainstream's imagination in the 1990s, but ultimately failed to deliver on the the medium's potential. Fast forward more than two decades and VR is once again the next big thing. With far more advanced hardware and billions in investment, virtual reality is on the cusp of upending storytelling but the future is still unclear. On November 14th, VR luminaries Eugene Chung and Nonny de la Peña will take the stage at the historic United Artists Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to help shed some light on how virtual reality and augmented reality are changing the way that we see the world.

  • The surprisingly lackluster rise of VR porn

    "It's like being inside of a womb or a particularly immaculate throat, all gently pulsating, mucus-y pink flesh." NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

  • The grantees of Engadget’s $500,000 immersive arts program

    When we launched the Alternate Realities grant program in May we had no idea what to expect. We saw a need for funding in the arts happening at just the time when new media like AR and VR were starting to go mainstream. So, with support from our parent company, Oath, we set out to fund five immersive art projects that push the limits of storytelling through emerging technologies. The response was overwhelming. Proposals came from as far away as Iran and Australia and ranged in discipline from theater to fashion, documentary to animation. There were multi-million dollar VR productions, animated shorts and escape rooms. (SO. MANY. ESCAPE. ROOMS.)

  • Apply now for Engadget’s $500,000 immersive art program

    We're just two days away from the official deadline to apply for Engadget's unreal arts program for unreal times. But what is time, really? In the spirit of breaking with convention, we've extended the deadline to apply for Engadget's Alternate Realities grant program an entire week. If you're an artist working with emerging technologies like AR, VR or AI, you have until July 7th to apply for one of five grants of up to $100,000 a piece. If you hadn't heard, we're funding immersive art projects (no, they don't have to be AR or VR specifically) that focus on the theme of Alternate Realities. Those projects will debut at the Engadget Experience, a one-day event exploring the future of creativity at the historic United Artists Theatre in downtown LA on November 14th, 2017. For more information you can check out our event page or apply here.

  • Meet the people behind Engadget's $500,000 immersive art grant

    Just over a month ago, I announced the Engadget Alternate Realities grant program, an initiative aimed at funding art projects that embrace new media and immersive technologies. With just two weeks left until our submission deadline (June 30th, 2017), I wanted to give you a little more information about the project and the people who helped shape it.

  • Inside The Mill’s mind-bending alternate reality art showcase

    I stepped inside a small, dark room in a large, airy loft space in New York's Soho district early Wednesday morning. Our host fitted me with an HTC Vive and told to explore the world around me. Within moments, I was trapped in a glass box, surrounded by other people, also wearing VR headsets, also trapped in glass boxes, one of whom continued to claw at the glass until both of our headsets were consumed by our own flesh. We were one with the machines. Over the next two hours I watched semi-autonomous robots run in circles, randomly scribbling on large sheets of butcher paper; pulled the virtual puppet strings of a CGI llama that lip synced to Mariah Carey; watched as Reeps One, a world-famous dubstep beatboxer, created unique digital sculptures with the incredibly nuanced tones of his voice; and floated through a VR dreamscape using my breathing and brain waves to propel me upward.

  • The semi-nude lives of webcam stars

    Harli Lotts (not her real name) knows her audience better than just about anyone I've ever met in online media. In just two years, the bubbly blonde from El Paso, Texas, has gone from manager of a rent-to-own store to rising internet starlet by making personal connections with a loyal online audience. She arrived at our interview on a sweltering Friday morning in a hotel suite on the Las Vegas strip with a small entourage of two other budding social media influencers, Amber Vixx and Stefanie Joy (also not their names). NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

  • Google Lens resurfaces questions about AI and human identity

    Today at the company's annual developer conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai uttered a phrase that will no doubt be repeated in corporate boardrooms across the world for the foreseeable future: "AI first." It wasn't the first we've heard of the formerly "mobile-first" company's focus on artificial intelligence, but Google I/O 2017 marked the first time we saw many of the tools that will back up that new catchphrase.

  • Blow-up dolls, vibrators and the sex robot’s uninspired origins

    Just a few days before Christmas 2015, I found myself staring down the silicone mouth hole of the "world's first blowjob robot." I'd set out to find the future of sex but quickly realized that: 1) The Autoblow 2+ wasn't a robot at all, and 2) I'd be better off sticking to a grapefruit for simulated fellatio. My encounter with the Autoblow 2+ was both disturbing and fascinating and sparked a 15-month exploration of male sex toys that came to a head in a small sex-robotics R&D lab in Southern California. NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

  • We're giving away $500,000 to foster art and technology

    Last summer something happened. Seemingly out of nowhere, a 21-year-old Japanese video game franchise became a 21st-century runaway hit with the help of the smartphone. After years of hype around the return of virtual reality, Pokémon Go leap-frogged VR and turned augmented reality into a household name. It was clear that we were ready for new ways of looking at the world.