What's Next? AI Massage Robots? Well Yes Apparently!

I read an article the other day, I know, very old fashioned of me. Not a TikTok video or an Instagram reel, but an actual article in a magazine about how the health and wellness industry is expected to change this year.

I’m not going to lie, I was shooketh!

I’ve always felt fairly confident that I work in one of those industries where it would be difficult for AI to truly take over. I love what I do, and the idea of a robot not only doing my job but potentially doing it better than me felt so far off in the distance that I never really gave it much thought.

But then came the nail tech robots, the lash tech robots and now, apparently, massage robots. Well I didn't see that one coming!

I’m honestly too scared to Google whether a facial robot already exists. Some might argue that they already do, given how many machines we now use in treatments, but the thought of an actual robot performing a facial instead of a human genuinely makes my skin crawl. Imagine it going rogue like something out of a film and attacking someone’s face. I mean, I’ve been doing this for over twenty years and I might have thought about it the odd time myself, we’ve all had our moments, but I’ve always stopped short of acting on it. Professionalism at all times, obviously.

Jokes aside, the speed at which AI is moving now is unsettling. As a very old school millennial who regularly yearns for life in the 90s, if you read one of my previous blog posts you’ll know exactly what I mean, I find the whole thing quite terrifying and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

What makes it even stranger is that while many of us feel uneasy about it, we’re also constantly feeding the beast without really thinking twice. From ChatGPT writing emails, sorry, but it’s such a giveaway now, we’ve all tried it, it was fun, but can we please go back to typing like humans again, to AI creating increasingly realistic images and videos (the dark web stuff is horrifying!), I’ve reached a point where I no longer fully trust anything I read or see. My default response has become, “yeah, but it’s probably just AI”.

And I find that a real strange place to be as a society.

So where does that leave us? Genuine question. What does this do to us long term? I avoid the scaremongering podcasts about robots taking over the world because I don’t need that level of anxiety in my life, but even without them, it’s hard not to feel a bit uneasy about the future. I also find it frustrating that I can’t read an article or blog post anymore without trying to figure out whether it was written by a human or generated by a machine (and if it is the latter, I tend to ignore it).

What I refuse to believe, though, is that humans will stop wanting connection. Real connection with other human energy. Surely a robot can’t replicate the feeling of being cared for by another human being? The natural intuition, empathy and the ability to read a room. Being a human has to count for something. At least, I really hope it does.

For those of you starting to get sick and tired of all this robotic feeling and just want to speak to a human about your skin health, then I'm here to do a consultation. You can book one here. Or if you prefer the non-human approach, fill out the skin check-in form here, which is completely free and you don't even have to speak to me, we can do it like robots via email.

Sory, had to get some kind of CTA in this email otherwise I get in trouble with the marketing department (a.k.a. myself)

So if you need me I'll be over here deleting my entire internet presence and retreating back to a landline, a Walkman and a disposable camera.

Is anyone else feeling like this, or is it just me?

Thanks so much for reading, I typed it myself and everything!

Emmaline