It’s disconcerting how there are often beautiful moments in life that pass unnoticed when we’re tethered to a screen. I remember sitting in a park one Saturday afternoon and instead of soaking it in that moment, I opened up my phone and started to doomscroll. Half an hour went by, then another. I couldn’t really tell what I saw on my phone that day, but I remember the guilt of realizing I had missed something real.
The film Her captures this paradox of hyper-connected disconnection perfectly: Theodore, the protagonist, finds intimacy not with the humans around him, but with Samantha, a sort of AI/OS designed to anticipate his every need. It feels uncomfortably familiar — who hasn’t felt something other than people understand them in their lives? This connection, however, is hauntingly incomplete. Samantha, for all her simulated emotion, exists only in an intangible reality.
Is craving for connection, but turning to the very technology that keep people apart, an “intimacy paradox”?
As the AI talk keeps on growing lately, I’ve caught myself anthropomorphizing some of these tools. Yes, saying a warm “thank you” to the reminders app after being remembered of something important, or a strange comfort in how accurately the keyboard app predicts my next text. It’s subtle, almost imperceptible, but there’s a sense of emotional attachment to these devices. Just like Theodore, I think we’re building relationships with things that can’t feel.
In Her, Samantha evolves from a tool to a companion, as her curiosity and attentiveness draw Theodore out of his shell. But unlike a human relationship, there’s no messy imperfection — no misunderstandings, no fights over trivialities. It’s connection on demand, smoothed of all the friction that makes human intimacy real.
That’s the allure and the limitation of AI-driven relationships. We get convenience, but at what cost? For instance, Theodore’s job of writing deeply personal letters for strangers feels like a blend of human creativity and machine efficiency. It’s not hard to imagine an AI doing his job today, given that those are letters and, while beautiful, are merely products of an outsourced intimacy, created for others and devoid of personal meaning for Theodore himself. On one hand, it’s liberating to have work automated — menial tasks vanishing with a single prompt, making us more time for what we actually want to do. But what happens when the work that gives us purpose is the very thing AI excels at? Can creativity, connection, storytelling — things that are inherently human — be within reach of algorithms?
Theodore’s job, however, isn’t just about writing, but filling a void for people who can’t articulate their emotions. It begs the question: is work generally valuable because it’s necessary, or because it lets us contribute something uniquely human? If the latter is true, then there’s a fantasy to entertain: one day, when the emails stop and the to-do list is blank, there will finally be a stress-free life for our hobbies. But does that mean leisure, or does it mean creation? This, evidently, differs from each individual. In particular, when I have long stretches of free time, I don’t find myself painting or writing novels but playing the same videogame as always or scrolling through any given social media. A sobering realization that freedom without purpose is just emptiness in disguise.
As someone who’s up to date on the latest AI trends, I’ve felt both empowered and alienated by its capabilities. Tools like ChatGPT can draft an outline or refine my clunky prose within seconds. But there’s always a missing piece, something that feels uniquely me that AI can’t replicate, which is both humbling and reassuring at the same time: no matter how advanced it becomes, there’s no replacement of the raw, imperfect spark of human creativity. Theodore’s journey with Samantha mirrors this realization, and as though she expands his world, she ultimately can’t remain as part of it. Our tools will always be just our tools, no matter how much we bond with them.
The promise of AI is seductive: more time, fewer mistakes, endless potential. Still, the more relying there is on it, the more risk of losing the friction that defines human experience there is to be had. Samantha is efficient, intelligent, and grows exponentially capable of being emotionally compatible with Theodore. But in doing so, she reflects its own purposed: leaving behind the ground messiness of his world. By replacing the parts of him that felt difficult or inconvenient, for example when streamlining processes or polishing rough drafts, she erode the very qualities that made him human.
Ultimately, Her gives the spectator a bittersweet truth: perhaps the most valuable role AI can play is not to make us happy, but to help us confront what happiness really means. When freed from the grind of repetitive tasks, we’re left with time and space to ask bigger questions: “What do we want?”; “What makes us feel alive?”; How do we want to spend the time we have?”.
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