Digital Engagement #6

Today I will be exploring the depiction of a digital future from the movie Her, which came out in 2013. The movie follows Theodore who is a writer and buys a new digital assistant system kind of like an Alexa but that can meet the user’s ‘every need’. The system which is a robotic assistant uses artificial intelligence to adapt and help the user with their tasks. Theodore during this time is very lonely and depressed, he is getting a divorce from his wife, and he is in a bad place mentally. The AI and Theodore start having more personal conversations that aren’t just based around technological needs, and they fall in love. This is supposed to be a romantic movie about the dystopian age we could be entering where AI is smart enough to mimic these human emotions, like love. I was really freaked out by the romantic aspects of this, and also freaked out by the capacity of the AI. They navigate a relationship between a robot and a human, and it is very eerie to watch because I think this is something that could genuinely happen one day if technology gets advanced enough. You are probably thinking, well a human is smart enough to not fall in love with inanimate object, but this was so easy for Theodore because of his loneliness and bad mental place. The AI like I said, can adapt to what the person needs because it follows the pattern, and I think that there were some kinds of manipulation tactics from the AI, knowing how he felt, to stimulate these feelings for him. Overall, I thought this movie was interesting especially because it came out in 2013 before AI was at the capacity it is now, and now looking back on it seems very similar to the things AI can do for us now.