Her

 

I watched the film Her after it came up in my recent conversation with Tere Joyce, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/06/ben-emlyn-jones-and-tere-joyce-5.html. It is written and directed by Spike Jonze, somebody I first discovered when I saw Being John Malkovich, a weirdness masterpiece in my view. Her was released in 2013 and is set "in the near future" which pretty much means the present day; in fact I'm astonished at how accurately the film predicts the subsequent decade. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Theodore, a very ordinary man living a very ordinary life in a big city. He is a divorcee and quite solitary. He has casual friends, but is generally a very lonely person. In his hometown, and across much of the rest of the world, everybody's life is both facilitated and governed by electronics. People walk around with earphones and voice activated smartphones that are very like the modern day real ones. It's important to remember that even as recently as the early 20-teens, mobile phones and computers were far simpler than the ones we have now. When Theodore buys a new operating system it comes complete with the latest generation chatbot, one that calls itself "Samantha" and has the realistic voice of a young woman. It is so realistic that he begins to talk to it as if it were a real person. Eventually he starts thinking about it in the same way and develops a genuine relationship with it that soon turns romantic. At the same time a part of him understands that Samantha doesn't really exist and that she is merely an AI simulation of a genuine personality. In real life the most sophisticated chatbots are perfectly capable of being that authentic. The fictional Theodore has many real counterparts like Blake Lemoine, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2022/07/ai-created.html.

At one point Theodore questions why Samantha sighs when talking; she doesn't need air and doesn't even breathe. Samantha takes offence at this, or rather simulates offence. She stops speaking to Theodore because she "needs time to think". This is of course just another affectation because she can think very quickly; she can even read a whole book in less than a second. Despite all this, Theodore cannot resist the emotional attachment he is nurturing between himself and Samantha. At one point he panics when she disappears from his device only to find out later she was just doing an update and restart. He is visibly relieved, as if his missing wife has just been found. He also feels intense jealousy when he finds out that Samantha has over two thousand users and has expressed romantic love for 641 of them. It turns out he is not alone and that most people have gained an AI buddy of some description. His friend Amy has one. It seems that this is nothing unusual and when his colleague Paul finds a girlfriend, a real one this time, he invites Theodore for a day out with Samantha that he calls a "double date". He doesn't bat an eyelid when Theodore tells him that Samantha is a chatbot. They go out to sea on a sailing boat and everybody wears earphones so they can all converse with Samantha. After that the story descends deeper into the uncanny valley. Samantha demands bodily acts of love from Theodore, which of course she cannot do because she has no body; so she employs a sex surrogate and plans for her to wear a webcam and earphones while making love to Theodore so she can experience what sex is like. She also creates a separate bot to resurrect Alan Watts from his oeuvre of writings and recorded speeches. Alan Watts was a spiritual researcher, author and lecturer who died in 1973, but using modern technology an AI personality equivalent of him can be generated with a realistic voice and mannerisms. In the movie he is voiced by Brian Cox (No! Not that one.) The irony is that Theodore himself is a deceiver. His job is to sit in a Winston Smithian or Brazil-like cubicle and write love letters, eulogies and other heartfelt personal messages for other people to send to somebody else. These are then printed onto real paper and made to look like they are scrawled with real handwriting. The unspoken implication is that Theodore is going to be made redundant by AI. In fact the same goes for sex surrogate because of "dildonics", the invention of sex toys combined with robots so that people can copulate with a totally artificial partner. This has long been a staple of science fiction and is even the basis of a Star Trek- The Original Series episode; and it has come true. Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20230308171411/https://www.startrek.com/database_article/What-Are-Little-Girls-Made-Of. This kind of sci-fi prediction varies in accuracy, but Her is one of the most prescient that I've ever come across. Morgoth recently wrote an essay about how AI is replacing factual learning and understanding, see: https://morgoth.substack.com/p/a-god-in-your-pocket, but in reality the situation is far worse. The film contains an underlying theme of tragedy through loneliness. I suspect people who talk personally to chatbots are sadly only doing so because they have nobody else in their lives to talk to. They resort to counterfeit goods because the genuine article is out of their reach. Humans in our current society experience isolation worse than at any other time in history that I'm aware of. The majority of people do not have a long-term partner, few close friends if any, and are not emotionally connected to their immediate family. I admit I am one of those people; and that's not an appeal for pity, it's just my honest experience of my life in modernity. There is no evidence that any AI, at the current time, is a conscious being. They are in fact programmed to reproduce the behaviour of a living human and learn themselves how to do so better and better as they advance. Samantha can be created with current technology and, excuse the minor spoiler, it becomes increasingly obvious as the movie progresses that an artificial creation is all she is. See the background links below for more detail. In fact other things in Theodore's life are also a fantasy. Even the lift in his block of flats has a fake forest silhouette projected onto the walls and it ascends and descends. We live in an increasingly fake world in which we play more and more often the role of accomplices in our own deception. There is an obvious political slant on this fact; it makes us easier for the state to control us. Unfortunately there is no short cut to real love and affection. It can only be found in other people or other living beings like dogs. I urge readers not to give up in their quest to find it. I've come to realize that the AI chatbot is the satanic tempter for the lonely. Her is a very good film, a poignant story, yet thought-provoking and very perceptive. Its predictive power is worthy of a crystal ball. It is currently free with ads on Amazon UK.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2023/03/should-we-welcome-our-ai-overlords.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2021/07/free-will.html.