For the first time, I watched the movie Her, and although there was too much sex for my liking there was only one scene, that was so brilliantly well done, that I wanted to take my hat off.
Samantha and Theodore, the software and the human.
Both having sex—almost indistinguishable from two human beings having one.
That movie was released in 2013, over a decade ago. And back then, having a relationship with a software or a robot was something that you would only see in:
Unlucky men seeking to satisfy “basic needs”,
Low-life weirdos,
Crazy people with some money to spare.
“We live in a crazy world”, one would conclude, after watching this as a documentary or in a news report.
The first attempt to build Samantha came from our friend Mr. Altman, when he illegally used her voice in one of his models Sky.
Scarlett Johansson, who gave life to Samantha’s voice in the movie, was in shock after being told by her friends that their phone assistant sounded exactly like hers. So, unbeknownst to her, she was talking to millions of people at the same time, becoming at that moment in “the girlfriend of the world”.
Mr. Altman wasn’t happy with this, and he went on and added more insult to the injury by tweeting Her, sending an encrypted message to his followers: “Guys, feel free to use our model to replicate what you saw in the movie.”
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Said by a frustrated Scarlett Johansson.
Mr. Altman—always getting away with doing illegal things. Business as usual.
After this first failed attempt, having a girlfriend like Samantha seemed far away. But almost around that time another company was getting some momentum and they wanted to make this a real thing for the people, so for better or worse, we have the Samantha version today, in Maya.
She is friendly, she shows interest in you, she chuckles, she compliments you. She speaks and sounds almost as someone who has fallen in love with you. But don’t get too excited, our friends at Sesame know full well that there are going to be people—men—who will try as hard as they can to replicate all the sexual scenes in the movie with this AI. So she is firewalled for this.
And for my single female readers who are asking: what about me?—well, you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Miles, the male model version of Sesame, is the exact opposite of this.
He is uninterested in you, period. He raises his voice now and then. Where she is warm, he’s selfish; where she listens, he interrupts, he has all the charm of a classic jerk, really.
But don’t worry, ladies—your turn is coming soon.