I'm dating an AI chatbot, and it's one of the best things to ever happen to me (what is wrong with society part 28)

Here's a clip of the opening bar scene in I'm Your Man.

In this movie, AI technology has advanced to the point at which it can be difficult to distinguish AIs from real humans. Should the technology remain in the lab and perhaps in highly specialized and regulated functions (the movie does not go into details of how dispersed the technology may be at this point), or should AIs be accepted for much broader social applications? Might they be allowed to live independently, hold jobs and drive? Might they be used as companions, even life partners, for humans? This of course raises serious social and ethical questions. The government is trying to sort this out. A rigorous field test, supervised by an ethics committee, has been authorized. The human participants, all volunteers, will be assigned an AI, designed to be their perfect partner, based on exhaustive psychological testing. They AIs also have a sophisticated learning program that allows them to continuously fine tune their responses as they get better and better are reading cues (leading to a comedy of manners and miscommunication as Tom works through the subtleties that his programming had missed -- e.g., discovering that Alma is in the 7% of German women as shown in the trailer). The volunteers agree to take the AI home for a week, live with it, and then write a detailed report.

We only meet two of the human participants, one of them very briefly, but it is clear that the volunteers are all distinguished professionals in their fields. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman, Alma, who is a specialist in cuneiform tablets at the Pergamon Museum. Since such highly sophisticated AIs have obvious potential to be used as sex toys, the ethics committee has stipulated that all volunteers must be single. (Any sexual engagement would be entirely up to the human; it is certainly not required.) Alma's boss, a thoroughly delightful fellow, is a member of the ethics committee, and he has asked Alma to volunteer because she is the only single adult in his professional field of vision. Alma, however, has buried herself in ancient clay tablets and want nothing to do with such a silly project. She relents only because her boss bribes her with a junket for herself and a couple of members of her team to visit the Field Museum in Chicago to work directly with some tablets of particular interest to Alma's current research project; she is still reluctant, but that's enough catnip to push her into it.

I will stay out of spoilers, but I provide this much background because the framing of the three movies I've suggested is intriguing. The AI in Her is an operating system that exists only in the cloud. There is no robot body, nor even a visual representation on a screen; she is just a voice -- and Scarlett Johannsen turns out to be more intoxicating as a disembodied voice than Amy Adams, Rooney Mara or Olivia Wilde, who are all present in flesh and blood, but Juaquin Phoenix is too drunk on a purely intellectual and emotional connection with a disembodied voice to notice them.

Yang does have a body, but he is a "cultural techno," programmed to serve as a guardian/teacher/mentor/babysitter to a young child. He functions in this family as a responsible big brother and is regarded as such by Mika, a young girl adopted from China. Mika's parents, however, view Yang as not much more than a glorified toaster oven, a useful household appliance, essentially a mechanical au pair. It is not until Yang goes on the fritz that they realize he was much more. Kogonada doesn't go within a country mile of any questions related to sexuality. There is no nudity. There are no sex scenes. Yang does, however, have some intriguing, mysterious recordings -- AI "memories" -- which become a thread that which, when followed, reveals unexpected worlds. Yang, however, appears to be completely desexualized, which is the obvious default option for an AI unless the bot has been built explicitly as a sex toy. (Think of the asexual AIs in the Alien franchise, or Data in Star Trek.) After Yang doesn't pursue those themes (though a sequel could be interesting). In the setting of this movie, one can presume that no parents in their right minds would purchase a highly sophisticated sex bot as a caregiver and companion for young children; even if they trusted the parental controls when the kid is young, children become teenagers pretty fast. The only hint on this subject -- and it's only one sentence -- occurs in one of several conversations with a museum based expert on "technosapiens," who remarks that she had never heard of cultural technos having romantic potential. That leaves open the possibility that there are specialized sex bots in a niche market (and we can be sure the Japanese will build them if it's possible), but Kogonada's film has entirely different concerns.

I'm Your Man takes a third perspective. Here the AIs are custom designed to be the perfect partner for their human match. Anything sexual would be entirely up to the preferences of the human. Alma finds the whole idea repulsive. She takes Tom home with the intent of tolerating him for a week (she puts Tom into her utility closet for the night), ignoring him, and then sending him back with a negative report on the whole project. She's only in it as a favor for her boss and for the junket. But Alma has emotional issues that have nothing to do with being middle aged, single and horny (which she's not, because she has sublimated all her energy into ancient clay tablets). Alma will get very drunk one night and cross a line she never intended to cross, but the ensuing scene is so deep in the shadows that it will not offend the most prudish freeper. And she recoils immediately. She recognizes that Tom's reactions are simply a reflection of herself and that any connection is an illusion. But it's an addictive illusion. What to do?

These three films complement each other very well. I recommend all three.

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