Today, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, a new AI model available to both free and paid users. Among the many upgrades, including faster response times, enhanced memory capabilities, and improved image analysis, is conversational audio that does its best to sound like a real human. You might laugh, joke, or even flirt a little. “It feels like the AI in the movies,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post Monday. “I’m still a little surprised that it’s real.”
To be honest, it felt like the AI in one movie in particular. Spike Jonze's 2013 science fiction film Her correctly foresaw a future where AI relationships could conveniently replace human connections. Well, that's what it felt like and sounded like. In the demo, ChatGPT's voice sounds strikingly similar to that of star Scarlett Johansson. In case you were wondering about the reference point, Altman says: tweeted “Girlfriend” – just one word – right after the event.
She is a great movie. Its take on AI is surprisingly nuanced, and its depiction of the core techno-human relationship leans more toward the utopian than the heady skepticism. Still, here's a shout-out to those looking to capture Jones' world, or any of his sci-fi touchstones, in this work. Just look at it one more time. All the way through. To make sure we're all on the same page about what kind of future we're moving towards.
As my colleague Kate Knibbs recently pointed out, Her's AI assistant Samantha is not malicious. It does not take the easy and trite path of opposing humanity. It doesn't even separate people from the rest of society. In Jones's imagined future, AI partners are so standardized that no one bats an eye when Samantha's user, Theodore, takes it as a double-girlfriend date plus one.
It's easy to see why she's so attractive to AI companies. At first glance, this has all the benefits of conversational artificial general intelligence and none of the drawbacks. (Notably, as Nibbs also notes, there is none of the job loss or economic disruption that AGI foreshadows.) However, the inhabitants of Her's world have no problem interacting with her AI. The fact that it is not does not mean that it is a free good. Her AI relationships in this movie are easy and solid, but also false. Samantha exists to meet Theodore's needs. It is a dynamic that allows him to receive without giving, and that allows him to always feel secure that he is understood without having to make any effort to understand others.
Only after Samantha leaves does Theodore confront his own troubled relationships. He writes a letter to his ex-wife. He is watching the sunrise with his neighbors. These are simple human acts that have been postponed thanks to AI. roll credit.
Honestly, even if we don't agree on what to take from it, at least she should have a relatively bright future ahead of her. This is one of her least obnoxious examples of her tech billionaire class fascination with science fiction. Elon Musk describes the Cybertruck as follows:design for blade runner [sic]“What is Blade Runner?” [sic] I would have driven. ” As Max Reid has pointed out more fully than I have, this is wrong on many levels, not least that the future of Blade Runner is not what everyone should aspire to.
