"How nice that I could love someone" AI replacing deceased loved ones in film

Abstract

Research shows that media have a big impact in the way humans think about life. We mostly learn how to handle social situations using our own and others’ life-experiences, however, film and other media also plays a big role. This thesis investigates the way film informs our ideas about the future. Especially about a future where a loved one is replaced by something non-human which looks and acts human. Science fiction movies present fantastical situations in which humans interact with aliens, robots, holograms, artificial intelligence and so on. Nowadays, interacting with an artificial human looking entity is no longer a distant future. What happens to our understanding of life, ourselves and our relationships with others when we are able to build intimate relationships with an artificial intelligent human looking entity? And what happens when this entity is an exact replica of a deceased partner? This thesis examines the composition of the film ​Marjorie Prime (2017) ​and the episode ​Be Right Back (2013) from the series ​Black Mirror (​ Charlie Brooker) using a neoformalistic approach and rhetorical method of analysis to find out how these films are set up to convey a message and affect the spectator. This thesis argues that film can trigger critical thinking about human-machine relationships and can contribute to robophilosophy by analyzing film as virtual laboratories.