(KPRC/NBC News) Houston, Texas could soon be home to America's first "robot brothel."
Yuval Gavriel operates "Kinky S Robots" in Toronto, Canada, where customers can rent life-like sex robots for $120 an hour and buy them for between $2,500 and $10,000.
Now he's hoping to set up shop in Houston.
"We're ready as soon as we get the get-go," Gavriel said. "We're legal people."
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday he was asking the city's legal department to see if any existing ordinances apply to Kinky S Dolls and whether any changes need to be made.
"It's not the sort of business that we advertise for or seek to attract or quite frankly that I want in the city of Houston," Turner said.
Gavriel said he would like to get the mayor's blessing, but his attorneys told him it's not a requirement.
"We want to open peacefully and without opposition from any group," Gavriel said.
He said Houston was chosen, in part, because it doesn't regulate sex robots.
A growing movement to stop Kinky S Dolls is being led by Elijah Rising, a Houston nonprofit dedicated to ending sex trafficking. The organization started a petition that now has 7,500 signatures.
"These rape bots are mechanized pornography and everything we know about porn fueling the demand for real women, real children in the sex-trafficking industry is going to apply to this robot brothel," said Executive Director Micah Gamboa.
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