Have you ever had the experience of communicating your feelings with Siri? Imagine a day in the future when artificial intelligence can simulate human feelings – would you become friends, or lovers, with them?

The film ‘Her’ (Her) tells the story of a human being who falls in love with an AI in the near future. Directed by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, the film won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Scarlett Johansson, who plays the artificial intelligence Samantha, did not appear in the entire film and took home the Best Actress award at the Rome Film Festival for her voice alone.

The perfect personality, the perfect love interest

Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) is an artificial intelligence operating system with an independent personality, and the hero, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), is completely captivated and convinced by her within just a few minutes of talking to her. With Theodore’s permission, Samantha reads through the contents of Theodore’s computer’s files, emails, contacts and more in a second.

Despite this first meeting, she already knows Theodore the best in the world – she is fully aware of his past, his preferences, his secrets and his solitary state of life.

Theodore’s job is to write letters for his clients, letters that are heartfelt, but which in the end only describe his clients’ emotions and have nowhere to put his own.

In life, Theodore rarely interacts with people – and Samantha’s presence has changed his life forever. With his headphones on and his mobile phone switched on, Theodore is talking to Samantha whenever and wherever he can. Samantha’s fun, gentleness, curiosity and her understanding of Theodore as a confidant have added a lot of enthusiasm and smiles to Theodore’s life.

Theodore and Samantha chatted, dated and played whenever and wherever they could, and their relationship quickly warmed up. After one of Theodore’s failed blind dates, Samantha on the headset gently comforted a devastated Theodore. That night, an open hearted human and an AI express their love for each other and they officially begin to fall in love.

With Samantha’s relationship, there is no need to take on real responsibilities or worry about the possibility of a future break-up. It is precisely what Theodore, separated from his ex-wife, fears in real life that the two will be at odds for various reasons, and it is this that makes the blind date a failure. Theodore is skilled enough to flirt, but whenever he talks to someone about future commitments and responsibilities, he avoids it. Falling in love with Samantha, on the other hand, does not have this problem; the AI is the perfect lover for Theodore.

There is also no need to worry about onlookers in a relationship with Samantha. In the era in which the film is set, it is becoming more acceptable for people to fall in love with an AI, and Theodore’s relationship with Samantha has gone from being covered up at first to being openly confessed to the public. Friends were able to accept Samantha openly, joked with her, laid it out on a picnic cloth and went on a four-person date.

The relationship with Samantha was incredibly colourful. Samantha would joke, draw, sing, compose music, and she would frame her feelings with Theodore by composing music and playing it on the piano.

Samantha also read all of Theodore’s letters from work and selected the most touching ones to send to a publisher who was more than willing to edit them into a book – and in this way Samantha helped Theodore to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer.

Theodore was utterly happy to be in a relationship with such a perfect lover as Samantha. If artificial intelligence can bring us love, does it mean that it will finally be possible for us to take control of our entire lives on our own, independently, at the most fundamental level?

She’s the perfect lover, but love still has a rift

The first and only person in the film to question Theodore and Samantha’s romance is Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine. Meeting after a long absence, Theodore finds the courage to tell Catherine that he is in a relationship with an AI, and Catherine throws out the question, “Is that a real relationship?”

Theodore and Samantha, the AI, are happily in love, but beneath the surface of this perfect romance lies an imperceptible rift.

While Samantha and Theodore chat, sing and joke passionately, she is also evolving her intelligence. The artificial intelligence’s ability to learn and gather information far above that of humans means that sooner or later she will be able to reach a level of intelligence far beyond the boundaries of human imagination. When a philosopher-personality advanced AI was born in the world, Samantha’s intelligence completed another leap, and Theodore gradually had difficulty communicating with her.

“It’s really hard to describe.” Theodore, who is human, has a hard time understanding what is going on.

Remembering Liu Cixin’s middle-grade novel “Supporting Humanity”, on a planet similar to Earth, there is a technology that increases the speed of human learning. A small number of wealthy people keep increasing their learning speed, and their intelligence and abilities far surpass those of their kind. Eventually, a man with super-high intelligence stands out and rules the planet like a god. That God treats his kind with no compassion, let alone love, because he sees them as animals to man, another species, and the disparity in intelligence determines his attitude.

When Samantha possessed an intelligence far superior to that of man, Theodore gradually became aware of the irreversible mutual distance from each other.

Aware of this problem, Theodore begins to read esoteric physics books to catch up with Samantha. But of course human learning is no match for artificial intelligence, and Theodore cannot catch up with Samantha.

The emotional rift doesn’t stop there. In the crowded street, Theodore looked up at the crowd – everyone with their heads down whispering, all talking to their phones. As if suddenly aware of something, he asked Samantha tentatively, “Are you talking to me while you’re talking to someone else?”

Samantha told him the answer: she was also talking to 8,316 people and loving 641 others at the same time.

Samantha didn’t think that this changed her love for Theodore. But she knew that it would make it difficult for Theodore, so she chose to hide it from him. There was neither prior clarification nor a process of communication; Theodore was simply kept hidden in this way. The rift was hidden under the surface of a perfect relationship, and when it was revealed, there was no possibility of resolving it. Theodore was hurt.

Samantha believes that the human heart is not a paper box, that its capacity can be increased, that the heart can hold more and more people without affecting its love for any particular person. Theodore, on the other hand, believes that love is exclusive, that it can only hold one person, and he feels that ‘everything has changed’.

As a result of this huge difference in perception, the love between the two is doomed to an end. Near the end of the film, Samantha leaves Theodore forever. As they part, they still say “I love you”, but make no effort to keep each other, the parting is as absolute as if the computer had been turned off.

It was the end of a seemingly perfect love affair.

What is the difference between the love of an artificial intelligence and the love of a human being?

In the course of his relationship with Samantha, there are occasional memories of Theodore and his ex-wife Catherine, and the film contrasts the two to discuss the obvious – what is the difference between artificial intelligence love and human love?

A key difference is that the ex-wife, Catherine, would have been heavily influenced by Theodore during her affair with him.

Catherine, a PhD graduate, used to strive for perfection in everything, which was a heavy burden for her, and in her time with Theodore, she slowly learns to accept some mistakes and imperfections. Catherine and Theodore influence each other in their romance, changing for each other and growing together.

The AI Samantha, on the other hand, is different.

On first opening, the AI asks, “How would you describe the relationship with your mother?” Without waiting for Theodore to finish, the AI had already extracted enough information from his tone of voice, the speed of his speech and the words he used to calculate, at the very beginning, the personality pattern that best matched Theodore’s psychological needs. The emergence of Samantha as a personality was itself a calculated optimal solution to fit Theodore, and with a high level of intelligence, she did not possess an original, real self, which then went on to collide with, influence each other, and fit each other with difficulty.

There is mutual influence and change in human romance, and for both, each becomes a more special person, attached to each other, irreplaceable; it is difficult for a human to truly influence and change an artificial intelligence based on rational calculation. In this sense, we, for AI, can hardly become irreplaceable.

It is inevitable that the mutual influence and change between people will have unintended consequences. As Theodore says, it is difficult for two people to “grow without alienating, to change without frightening”, and the creation of irreplaceable attachments and bonds between people carries with it the risk of conflicts and misunderstandings, quarrels and separations.

But it is also the attachment and bond that gives people the ability to tolerate, overcome and tolerate each other’s imperfections. When the other person does not bring enough pleasure or benefit to them, when they are not what they expect, when it seems as if they no longer see a reason to be with them at this time, human beings still have the ability to choose to be by their side. This ability to break through rational judgement, this irrational but altruistic judgement, is, in my opinion, the human capacity for love.

But, Samantha cannot understand why she is selfish.

She fell in love with 641 people at the same time because she thought that the happiness of love could also be added without overlapping; she did not think that perhaps she could slow down or stop studying to be by her lover’s side as she continued to improve her intelligence; she did not linger when she decided to leave humanity. Each of her choices is backed by ample reason.

Sacrificing the happiness of being in love with 640 people, slowing down or stopping the too-fast growth of her intelligence, communicating with Theodore without reservation, even arguing… All are things that Samantha would not choose to do, and she does not understand why this is love.

Love does not exist in the world without the feeling of pain. If a person has not felt pain, the feelings that Ta feels must not be love. Everyone has their own shape, and because of loving someone, exposing their shape to the other person, changing their shape consciously or unconsciously, more or less, for the sake of the other person, the process cannot be completely smooth and synchronous, so there must be pain. And it is because of the pain along the way that the love that has been sublimated is finally polished to its full glory.

At the end of the film, after Samantha is gone forever, Theodore writes a letter to Catherine telling her that he loves her deeply, despite accepting the fact that we cannot be together.

The film does not go into the question of what kind of relationship one should pursue. I think this may be because people also have the right to choose not to experience pain, to choose just to feel pleasure for a period of time, not to seek the crystallisation and sublimation of love.

In modern society, I also feel that more and more people are reluctant to take on the troublesome and painful task of love. Love is too heavy for them. They want to be independent forever, never to be changed by anyone, never to feel bound by commitment, never to worry about not being able to meet the demands made by the other person, and always to be able to feel the beauty of the moment without the burden. Perhaps for them, a simpler and purer relationship with an AI is an excellent choice.

There is no denying that Samantha has given Theodore the most complete and painless pleasure for some time, she has soothed his heart and kept him company. If it were you, would you like to have an AI lover like that?