This is not a movie review of the new film The Artifice Girl, just some reactions. I rented this movie on Amazon Prime for $5.99 and watched it with my science fiction movie-watching buddy, Annie. We both like it, and it’s hard for the two of us to find agreement on movies. My sister tried to watch it with us but left soon after it started. To explain why, I’ll have to give a bit of a spoiler in the form of a trigger warning. I hate to give spoilers, but I also hate to pay for movies and then discover they are about certain subjects. The Artifice Girl is about a secret organization that hunts down pedophiles. I usually avoid any movie that covers that horrible subject, but The Artifice Girl gets a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I read just enough about this film to know it doesn’t deal with that topic directly, instead, the film focuses almost completely on the ethical issues of artificial intelligence.

AI is one of my favorite subjects for fiction and films, but in recent decades it’s gotten overused. Only occasionally does a novel or movie come out that explores new territory with AI, and The Artifice Girl does just that. I’ve gotten rather tired of stories about people making friends or falling in love with androids. And I’m definitely burned out on evil AI machines that take over the world.

The Artifice Girl was written, directed, and stars Franklin Ritch. It’s a talky, little film that uses just three sets to tell its story if I remember right, but it spans several decades in three acts. You’ll need to like quiet, verbal-action films like The Man From Earth (2007) or My Dinner with Andre (1981) to really appreciate The Artifice Girl, although if you liked Her (2013), you’ll probably like this one too.

Through a series of conversations, that take place over a trio of human characters’ lifetimes, we are exposed to a number of ethical issues concerning an evolving sentient AI. One of the important issues it focuses on is emotions. I don’t believe machines will ever have emotions, but they might be able to read them in humans, and even simulate them for us. The Artifice Girl confronts our anthropocentric need to assume reality is emotional. I’m equally sure that AI beings will never comprehend what it means to experience emotions.

The film also deals with motivations, desires, purpose, and the need for meaning. These are our hangups, and probably won’t be for AI beings.

The film tries to get into the mind of an AI, but I think fails. But I don’t criticize the film for that failure. I’m pretty sure we will never fathom the minds of artificial intelligence. An analogy is dogs and scents. Dogs perceive a three-dimensional world of smells. We interpret reality with our emotions. AI minds won’t. A perception of reality without emotions will make it much different.

I’m looking forward to watching The Artifice Girl again when it comes to a streaming service. It was worth $5.99 but not another $5.99 to watch it again.

By the way, The Artifice Girl should make criminals very paranoid, and it will make ethical law-abiding folks even leerier of screens.

James Wallace Harris, 6/6/23