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It's interesting, because I just finished viewing her, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely fellow who makes his living writing letters. Theodore Twombly writes

It's interesting, because I just finished viewing her, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a lonely fellow who makes his living writing letters. Theodore Twombly writes letters on the behalf of clients. He writes heartfelt love letters, letters from daughter to father, letters to bridge the distance for friends. And of course, the premise of the film is that he installs an AI OS and falls in love with the disembodied Assistant voice, Samantha. And [spoiler alert], Samantha's parting gift to Theodore is that she arranges to have his letters published as a bona fide book by a real book publisher, because this is the best way she found to honor him and his work. It's really touching that this ephemeral AI without a body should reach into the physical world that Theodore inhabits in this way.

shiroiushi 2y ago
I haven't seen it, but everything about that movie sounds completely unrealistic, like some sort of alternate-reality sci-fi.
- throwaway918299 2y ago
  We are careening toward that future at a record clip. Maybe not the ending…but the AI girlfriends are already here.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Again, I haven't seen the movie, but I did read about it long ago when it first came out: I thought one of the premises was that computer screens don't exist (or are rarely used), and people only talk to their computers (or AI assistants). To me, that makes no sense at all, because speech is a vastly less efficient form of information transfer that anything visual.
    - AStonesThrow 2y ago
      Yeah, it was fairly unrealistic. It was set in "near-future Los Angeles" and the skyline was often a prominent feature. The wardrobes and color palettes were sort of drab, 1970s, though. Computer screens were downplayed a lot. Theodore did work at a screen to write his letters, although they were ultimately committed to real paper. "Samantha", his AI girlfriend OS, seldom appeared on a screen after her initial setup. He wore an earpiece, and he carried a little "flip box" with a camera in it, so that Samanatha could experience reality while riding in his pocket. He essentially had full-time two-way verbal contact with Samantha. When he was lying in bed, he would converse with her, and his earpiece was always noticeable. She had no avatar, no image on-screen. (They actually recast "Samantha"'s voice in post-production.) I think this aniconic treatment was helpful in reinforcing just how unreal Samantha was. She ends up leaving him and disappearing with all the other AIs. Yet, she never had a tangible presence to him at all. But I believe that it was realistic enough in depicting a parasocial relationship between a fundamentally lonely guy and his "pet AI" system. Surely this sort of thing will happen all the time. It already does. Perhaps the unreal part was how he reverts to tangible human connection for the very ending of the film. Will it last for him?

shiroiushi 2y ago

I haven't seen it, but everything about that movie sounds completely unrealistic, like some sort of alternate-reality sci-fi.

throwaway918299 2y ago
We are careening toward that future at a record clip. Maybe not the ending…but the AI girlfriends are already here.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Again, I haven't seen the movie, but I did read about it long ago when it first came out: I thought one of the premises was that computer screens don't exist (or are rarely used), and people only talk to their computers (or AI assistants). To me, that makes no sense at all, because speech is a vastly less efficient form of information transfer that anything visual.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Yeah, it was fairly unrealistic. It was set in "near-future Los Angeles" and the skyline was often a prominent feature. The wardrobes and color palettes were sort of drab, 1970s, though. Computer screens were downplayed a lot. Theodore did work at a screen to write his letters, although they were ultimately committed to real paper. "Samantha", his AI girlfriend OS, seldom appeared on a screen after her initial setup. He wore an earpiece, and he carried a little "flip box" with a camera in it, so that Samanatha could experience reality while riding in his pocket. He essentially had full-time two-way verbal contact with Samantha. When he was lying in bed, he would converse with her, and his earpiece was always noticeable. She had no avatar, no image on-screen. (They actually recast "Samantha"'s voice in post-production.) I think this aniconic treatment was helpful in reinforcing just how unreal Samantha was. She ends up leaving him and disappearing with all the other AIs. Yet, she never had a tangible presence to him at all. But I believe that it was realistic enough in depicting a parasocial relationship between a fundamentally lonely guy and his "pet AI" system. Surely this sort of thing will happen all the time. It already does. Perhaps the unreal part was how he reverts to tangible human connection for the very ending of the film. Will it last for him?