The movie Her debuted in theaters more than a decade ago, in 2013. At that time, Apple launched the iPhone 5s, Samsung did the same with the Galaxy S II Plus and, in the field of computers, there were still two years left until the launch of Windows 10. With these examples we realize an obvious reality: the technology industry was very different from that of 2024. Despite this, the film written and directed by Spike Jonze had incredible successes. In just over two hours, exhibits digital habits that in that year belonged to the realm of chimera. So much so that after the premiere we did not hesitate to describe it as a “monumental work of science fiction.”
That which in 2013 was a delirium of the imagination—and which Her portrayed beautifully—is now a reality in the tech industry. Fiction became science. The fluid dialogue with machines, the daily walks in virtual environments, even the love between humans and inert entities. In other words, it is valid to say that Jonze anticipated the rise of generative artificial intelligence with spectacular success.
For the unsuspecting, the film Her —here the details in IMdB— focuses on the life of Theodore Twombly, a lonely man who goes through days of melancholy after distancing himself from his ex-partner. By bonding with an intelligent operating system—who has a woman’s voice and is named Samantha—he regains his joy. There is not only fraternity: the human and the software They begin a romantic relationship, overcoming the difficulties that arise from their differences.. The main and irremediable one: he has a body and she doesn’t. On the other hand, Theodore will never match the intelligence and abilities of his partner.
Scarlett Johansson reminds us that the film Her anticipated the future
At the end of May, we witnessed an unthinkable showdown between Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI. What happened? The American actress accused the creators of ChatGPT of having copied the nuances of her voice for an assistant who was added to the chatbot. An important detail, before continuing: Johansson is the one who played the charming Samantha in the film Herin its English language version.
La blonde issued a statement pointing against OpenAI. She assured that the organization’s own CEO, Sam Altman, contacted her before the launch of ChatGPT-4o proposing that she provide her voice for one of the female versions. She turned down the job and yet when the feature was released, she was in for a surprise. “I heard the demo and I was shocked”, said. In his defense, Johansson cited a tweet prior to the deployment of the new AI model, in which Altman wrote a single word: “Her.” After the commotion, the American organization eliminated Sky, the voice of the controversy.
Beyond the conflict itself, this lawsuit reinforces what we want to tell here. That the movie Her anticipated the future of technology. Now, in a careful examination of the film we can find a good number of successes and some errors. Or could it be that what we now perceive as “errors” are, in truth, advances that will take place within another five years or a decade? Thus, the film starring Joaquin Phoenix will have been ahead of its time not 10 years but, perhaps, about 20.
A film that anticipated the future of technology
When the movie premiered Her, Siri had only been around for two years on the iPhone. Amazon’s Alexa had not even been launched: that happened in 2014. The Google assistant would only hit the market in 2016. Thus, One of Spike Jonze’s feats was to elevate the link between technology and humans to maximum power.. In scenarios that seem futuristic, it has shown what we are now experiencing immersed in the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
When Theodore first comes across an ad for OS 1—the operating system that becomes Samantha, and later falls head over heels in love with—the ad promotes it as follows. “It is the first artificially intelligent program. It is a conscience”. Doesn’t this sound – very similar – to what we now hear regarding ChatGPT, Gemini and the like?
In Johansson’s voice we corroborate many other aspects that allow us to confirm that the film Her He was at least a decade ahead of his time. “I read 180,000 baby names in two-hundredths of a second,” Samantha says when her user, Theodore, asks why she chose to be called that. “The DNA of who I am is based on the personality of thousands of programmers”, he explains in another passage. Excellent summaries to understand, in part, how artificial intelligence systems operate, even those that are now in vogue.
The film is full of nostalgic winks. For example, the male protagonist works at a company that writes handwritten letters. Pay attention, also, to the unique and ancient hook that Theodore uses to make his flip phone—another success—protrude from his pocket.
In addition to the detail, note the similarity of that position of the device with Ai Pin, a device with AI developed by the firm Humane. This product was presented as a revolution and, however, in its first deployment it received more criticism than applause. In any case, it is interesting to note that other advance of Her. Or could it be that technology is sometimes inspired by fiction?
There is another success that can be seen. When Samantha disappears towards the end of the film – in fact, the operating system is withdrawn from the market – desolation reigns among the users. The script doesn’t say it, but we can assume that regulation has arrived. Yes, a variable that is now also being debated, as generative AI models gain prominence and power, with their charms and also with the risks that arise from their use.
Where did the movie go wrong? Her?
With the prism of 2024, We will be unfair to Jonze’s script and point out some obstacles that his futuristic imagination encountered. However, in the epilogue of this section, we will give the right to the ideologue of the film Her.
Perhaps to add dramatic overtones to the plot—especially in the second half of the film—Samantha expresses obvious discomfort, derived from her desire. “What does it feel like to be alive, in that body?” she asks her partner. In a telling instance in the film, she enlists a real woman to take the role of her in a sexual act with Theodore, with unexpected results for her. The problem here is that artificial intelligence does not want. Those models were also not designed to deceive us or lie for the purpose of generating empathy. Samantha does it several times in the movie Her, so that Theodore gets away from his melancholy. Later, the intelligent operating system says, “You have helped me discover my ability to desire.”
As we pointed out, in this instance the AIs have no will or desire. As the idea of artificial general intelligence advances, is it possible that Jonze has advanced more than ten years and that what he shows Her will we just see it later? What will the societies of 2030 or 2035 say when they revisit this argument?
A film that emerged with humility and then conquered the public
There is an interesting detail behind the scenes of the film. Her. According to chronicles about the project, Jonze initially conceived it at the beginning of the century after reading an article about a messaging system that would allow chatting with artificial intelligence. That is to say, the filmmaker conceived his idea long before the general deployment of voice assistants.
Her had its official debut at the New York Film Festival in October 2013. In the first instance, the production company planned a release in a few theaters, but the public received the film with great pleasure: it raised $48 million, doubling the production budget. At the 86th Academy Awards it won the award for best original screenplay and did the same at the 2014 Golden Globe.
There is another disturbingly revealing aspect to the film Her. Not only did it advance the current state of artificial intelligence; He was also encouraged to address a taboo: the love between humans and machines. By this we are not referring to adoration for a device, but to the possibility that relationships similar to those that Theodore and Samantha had on screen could occur in the real world. The case of sex robots and even marriages with holograms are just a few examples of how Jonze anticipated his time. Even in 2024.
