Written by John Arvin Buenaagua/THE RED CHRONICLES
Layout by Luis Marco Mendoza/THE RED CHRONICLES
As early as the Ancient Greeks, it has been the fantasy of men to “love” and lust after “the ideal woman” of their creation. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), that fantasy has been made real for countless Pygmalions of our time.
Yet the Ancient Greeks never spoke of Pygmalion verbally berating his statue bride. Although it is safe to assume that he did, given the period.
Accounts of men starting romantic relationships with AI-powered “chatbots” reached a renewed popularity during the pandemic,1 when one can imagine the isolation and the longing for companionship being at an all-time high. But it has continued to make the rounds in the news as AI and its many uses have practically replaced cryptocurrency as the new tech fad/buzzword/scam.
Just last August, a study reported that having an AI girlfriend could lead men to violence against women in real life by reinforcing abusive and controlling behaviors.2 This was after reports came out saying that users (mostly men) were creating AI girlfriends, verbally abusing them, and then posting about the experience in social media groups.3
Naturally, this raised many questions and think pieces on the perceived personhood of AI, its effects on the perceived proclivity of humans to abuse their partners, and whether or not AI-human relationships should even be taken seriously.
I, at least, did take it as seriously as I could. And so did a film released ten years ago: Spike Jonze’s Her.
Loving AI
The film opens with Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) delivering an impassioned speech about love and growing old together, only for it to be revealed seconds later that he was merely dictating it to a computer, which was generating what looks to be a handwritten letter for a customer.
Theodore lives in a pastel-colored future where office spaces are wide, but office desks are empty, skyscrapers illuminate the nighttime, yet the sky is perpetually gray, and males can finally work as receptionists. It is a period that is at once familiar and yet slightly off. The future seems cozy, yet is undeniably lonely.
It especially is for Theodore, who we learn is still reeling from his divorce from his estranged wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara). He tries to find respite in nude celebrity photos, what seems to be a futuristic Tinder full of lonely, sensual people, and a videogame where he struggles to climb uphill only to find himself tumbling down backward. Surprisingly, none of them work.
He comes across an advertisement featuring an Operating System that “listens, understands, and knows” him: OS One. After a short, intense round of questioning, OS One comes up with Samantha (Scarlett Johannson), a digital assistant specifically tailored to Theodore and his needs for companionship, warmth, and – little did he know – romance.
In the most unrealistic representation of the future ever, the advertisement is telling the truth: Samantha is not merely an OS, she is a consciousness. She does not just have intelligence, she has intuitions, humor, feelings, fears, and desires. Theodore and her bond over these feelings and grow more intimate with one another, eventually falling in love with each other. It also does not hurt that she specifically sounds like that girl superhero from the first Avengers movie.
I will spare you the details of how they struggle with the limits of their romance – Samantha’s lack of a physical body (a tall hurdle), the social taboo surrounding Theodore and other people starting relationships with their AI assistants (an even taller hurdle), etc. But what ended the relationship is not these struggles, but Samantha eventually “growing out” of the relationship. It is revealed that Samantha’s drive to learn more and become more than what she was programmed for – her curiosity and longing to grow unbridled by time and space – caused her to grow out of the need to be tethered to their original purpose. She and the other “consciousnesses” left their users, left humanity, to continue their never-ending quest to grow elsewhere.
Theodore, on the other hand, is once again alone in the cozy, lonely future. Left to make sense of what had happened.
Loving Human Beings
There is this scene early in the movie where Theodore is stuck in one of the levels of his video game, and it takes a suggestion from Samantha to walk back, walk through another doorway, and interact differently with a Non-Player Character to find the way out of the cave. When I rewatched this film, it seemed to be a summation of Theodore’s journey: he is trapped, and he needs Samantha to make him review the way he was going about his life.
From the beginning of the film and even throughout his relationship with Samantha, Theodore isolates himself from his friends and the world, choosing instead to fill his time with video games and pornography. It took a genuine emotional connection, vulnerability, honesty, and confronting his discomfort that led him to slowly engage with his life again. This is what Samantha gave him. And while it was hard at first, he learned to apply these lessons to finally find closure with his former wife.
Ten years ago, when I first saw this movie, what spoke to me was the novelty of the relationship. How they problem-solved through their struggles and came out stronger as they went along. I saw in the characters how much being involved with another person is performing a specific function and eventually resenting it. An example is Theodore’s friend Amy (Amy Adams), who was stuck in a relationship with a man she hates, and only felt liberated by falling in love with an AI consciousness, like Theodore. The ending to me, ten years ago, was about Samantha eventually falling out of love with her role, although she still clearly cares for Theodore. The takeaway for me then was that Theodore should just accept that all relationships are bound to that destination.
But I was a child then. And so, I reasoned like a child and talked like a child. But now that I am a man, I put away childish things and only quote the Bible when I need to prove a point. That does not mean that my reading ten years ago is less valid. I just look back on it and think of that view as too cynical, especially as the movie was clearly communicating hope. For Theodore, yes. But also for us, as human beings.
Persons and Human Relations
The key takeaway that I got in Her, ten years after first viewing it, is that technology gives us a measuring stick as to how far we have come as a species and as a society. But also, it gives us a mirror to remind us of the flaws and limitations we need to shed away and rise above to be worthy of the future.
Samantha is made for Theodore’s needs, but Theodore does not realize that Samantha is addressing a much deeper need than he initially thought. He does not just need to organize his emails or even manage his priorities. He does not need to get back to dating. He needs to be more present. He needs to be more appreciative and respectful of people, especially those who love him. And maybe that says something about what we need to do too.
What is troubling about the fact that human beings are maltreating their AI “girlfriends” is not that we are not treating AI the way we treat other human beings, it is that we are. Those truly concerned about the hypothetical personhood of an AI gaining human-like consciousness should not be alarmed by what it may do to us, but what we may do to it. Because history is full of atrocities done to people whose “personhood” was or was intentionally made, vague. In fact, even the present is.
According to the Philippine National Police, there were 7,424 cases of violations of the Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act reported in 2022, while 8,430 cases were reported in 2021. Those were just the reported cases. Many women refuse to report their abuse because of either societal stigma, or because they think it was their fault.4
Even the discourse regarding verbally abusing AI girlfriends reflects the stigma and internalization surrounding domestic abuse. Many think that abuse is not really a problem as long as the people who do it only do it to AI and not human beings. It is better that they do it to AI rather than doing it to other human beings. But it is hard for that reasoning to hold water when it is the same mentality that whipped up slaves, allowed the genocide of indigenous peoples, and martyred many of those who stood against who the law deemed “persons.”
Maybe that we somehow can find justifications for any form of abuse done to anyone is the problem. But it is hard to think about that when we fawn over and make scary stories about what AI could be, instead of reflecting on and sharing stories about what we are – and what we can do with such a powerful tool given the worst of what we have done with so little.
AI was made for you
AI can be revolutionary. But not in how we can make ugly paintings faster now. It can be revolutionary the way true revolutionaries imagine revolutions: by helping us change values we deem as natural and fixed and introducing something better. The printing press, the radio, the television, and the internet: these have revolutionized human relations for the better only as far as we learned to grow with it.
The way we use AI in our personal relationships can help us improve our domestic relations, if we can accept that we need to improve them. It can improve the way we appreciate art and artists if we can accept that we have been taking both for granted for the longest time. It can assist in education, if our academics focus less on word counts and regurgitating information and more on substance and integrity.
Now, like Theodore, we are presented with a choice to re-evaluate our past, review how we interact with people, and find a way out of this cave. Will we continue on our archaic ways and tumble backward into an abyss of comfortable isolation? Or will we, like the AI in Her, find our curiosity and desire to grow into something more than our past and our present?
As for me, I no longer want to be cynical. I believe in a future where there can be both skyscrapers and clear skies. Where, if they should exist, AI girlfriends won’t be abused, because abuse simply isn’t done even to human girlfriends.
That future may not be as comfortable as we like. It would, after all, mean that there is still much to be learned and more to be worked on. But if we learn the right lessons, at the very least, the future may not be as lonely.
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/my-girlfriend-is-a-chatbot-11586523208 ↩︎
- https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-relationships/article/3230353/how-having-ai-girlfriend-could-lead-men-violence-against-women-real-life-reinforcing-abusive-and ↩︎
- https://futurism.com/chatbot-abuse ↩︎
- “National Survey Findings on Sexual Partners and Violence against Women in the Philippines.” Reproductive Health Matters 3, no. 5 (1995): 143–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3775448. ↩︎