Life can imitate art even if it doesn’t intend to. That is what happened with Her.

Do you remember the movie Her? From 2013, was directed by Spike Jonze, and was about a man falling in love with his computer’s AI? I recently rewatched it and I forgot how uncomfortable it made me feel. Yet, I think this uncomfortable-ness is a recently new feeling for this movie. 

If you haven’t heard about or seen Her, don’t worry. Here is a quick summary:  

We, the viewer, are going through the life of Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Theodore is a middle aged man who is going through a divorce. One way he copes with the divorce is by installing an AI into his computer. This AI named Samantha, voiced by Scarlet Johanson, becomes his friend. But as Theodore hangs out and talks more with Samantha he starts to gain feelings for her. Possibly even falling in love with her. 

If this sounds interesting to you, I recommend you watch this movie. Because it’s a really beautiful movie and I think it would be a very heartwarming love story if we weren’t actively going through it.

With the rise in AI technology, like generative AI, it’s starting to be easy to compare this dystopian type movie with the world today. I think this is why Her is so uncomfortable to watch now. When Her first came out in 2013 generative AI, like the one Samantha is, was still just a thought, a concept. It was not close to being real. Now in 2026 it is actually happening. If I wanted to, I could pick up my phone and talk to an AI that speaks and acts just like Samantha.  People are doing what Thedore did in the movie here in real life. There are stories upon stories of people falling in love with their AI chatbots, and it is damaging lives.

Falling in Love With Your AI

But how and why do people fall in love with their AI chatbots? If you haven’t used an AI chatbot before you may not know how compliant the chatbot is just for the user to stay on the app/site. Eddy Burback, a YouTuber/content creator, made a video about this exact thing. In the video Burback wanted to see how easy it would be to go into “AI psychosis.” Turns out the answer is: pretty easy. No matter how insane or implausible the ask/idea would be, it would take very little to make the AI say that it is the smartest idea ever. 

This compliance makes it easy for the people pursuing their AI chatbots to like and keep talking to them. It is a one-sided relationship that people are willing to keep going. But the obvious question is, where do you get the physical aspect. You are never going to see/meet your new girlfriend/boyfriend in real life and hold their hand or hug them. That is where one problem arises. Humans are social creatures. We need to talk to other humans, have physical connection, to be able to thrive in life. But with AI chatbots it can make people isolate and end up hurting themselves. 

My Opinions on AI

I think AI should not be available to the public. Once it stops destroying communities’ water supplies I may rethink that. But, I still have some problems with it. In Bird by Bird, a book by Anne Lamott, Lamott writes about the “shitty first draft.” Lamott talks about how as a writer you have to be ok that you will most of the time have a terrible first draft of a piece of work. It promotes creativity and free thinking.

But with AI, students and some writers are using it to create that first draft and sometimes write/create the full product. AI is creating artists and writers who are lazy and void their audience of meaning. It feels like a betrayal to audiences when creators use AI. It also is just bad work. AI does not have a soul, and all art needs a soul to speak to people, with AI it’s mundane and dull. 

Now I want to get your opinion, what do you think of AI and its capabilities?