So yeah. I guess there’s no point easing into this one. Disturbing new research has revealed that way too many of you want to fuck your virtual voice assistants. According to a study from Mindshare, over a quarter of regular voice users (26 per cent) have had “sexual fantasies” about their phone’s dulcet digital tones. I am sickened to my core, guys!

The research collected information from 1,001 smart phone smartphone users, all of whom were over the age of 18. It found that a significant amount of were beginning to develop “deeper emotional attachments” to their voice assistants. In fact, a third (37 per cent) of regular users stated that they loved them so much that they wished they were “real”. 

“It is interesting, when something acts naturally and human back to you, how much we imbue it with sentience, with human personality,” mused Martin Reddy, the co-founder of tech company PullString. 

As mentioned before, these results apply to “regular” users of virtual voice assistants – so people who make use of them at least once a week. According to the study, that was only 18 per cent of participants, which, thankfully, narrows down the pool significantly. But it still begs the question: what kind of sex are people thinking of having with Cortana? How would it even work? 

It’s not the first time this kind of behaviour has come to light, either. Back in October, the chief executive of Robin Labs, Ilya Eckstein, revealed that his company’s virtual assistant – known as ‘Robin’ – was being misused up to 300 times a day by “lonely” men who wanted to “talk dirty”.

“This happens because people are lonely and bored,” he explained at the time. “It’s mostly teenagers and truckers who don’t have girlfriends. They really need an outlet.”

“It is a symptom of our society. As well as the people who want to talk dirty, there are men who want a deeper sort of relationship or companionship.”

Read the full report – conducted by Mindshare and J. Walter Thompson – here.