This is a review for the 2023 movie “The Artifice Girl”. As society starts to question the ethics behind AI, “The Artifice Girl” brings us a grounded take on the “AI gone rogue” story.
What is The Artifice Girl about?
“The Artifice Girl” is a small-scale movie, featuring three scenes from different time periods and revolving around four key characters. These characters include two humanitarian agents, a developer, and Cherry (Tatum Matthews), an AI model personified as an 11-year-old girl. Cherry’s primary objective is to lure and capture sex traffickers worldwide.
The film presents Cherry and her team in three different stages of her life. In the first scene, Cherry appears to be less advanced than current AI models, providing pre-conceived answers, and requiring manual input for unexpected situations. In the second scene, set after a time jump, she has surpassed human intelligence.
The movie centres on a moral debate among the characters regarding the ethics of their actions. It takes a grounded approach to the AI genre, more reminiscent of early Black Mirror than M3gan. The audience is invited to ponder the moral implications of the characters’ actions.
The Artifice Girl (2023) Review
Low-budget sci-fi movies are always interesting. They can either go the route of corny, camp effects or this more dramatic, small-scale (but big impact) storytelling. A movie like this hinges on two things:
- The strength of the moral dilemma.
- The quality of the dialogue from those debating it.
It can feel easy to write-off the moral dilemma of this movie as a bit silly. You only need to play around with ChatGPT for a few minutes to know that it’s very far from being capable of emotion. At this point, it’s just a search engine with a different user interface. However, with the rapid expansion of technology in this field – is it implausible that we see something like this within our lifetimes? Unlikely, perhaps, but implausible, no. The movie allows the debate to happen authentically. Cherry doesn’t randomly become evil, she stays true to her directive throughout.
The dialogue of this movie is strong, and you can understand the characterisations and view-points of all characters. To her creator, she is (and always will be) a piece of code – her consent does not matter. To others, she is far more than that. As for Cherry’s opinion, she isn’t quite sure.
This movie had the potential to be very boring. It’s, ultimately, just characters talking for 90 minutes with little action. However, the ferocity of the debate and a few twists and turns keeps viewers on their toes.
The rise of AI movies
With ChatGPT starting to break into the public consciousness, it’s likely that we’re going to see a lot more movies like this one. In a way, this and M3gan were ahead of their time. However, unlike M3gan, this movie actually has something to say on the topic.
Both “M3gan” and “The Artifice Girl” are movies centred around an AI girl, with the mission of protecting children. They both end up going rogue, though in slightly different ways. M3gan decides that the only way to keep her owner safe is to kill anyone who could pose a threat. Cherry, on the other hand, is depressed and wants the freedom to explore herself. Here’s hoping that if ChatGPT has a mid-life crisis, it chooses the latter.
Who should watch this movie?
If you have any interest in the debates raging around AI and machine learning, you’ll get a kick out of this movie. It does a really good job at keeping itself grounded and avoiding being too fantastical. Some of Cherry’s responses sound like they’ve come straight from ChatGPT.
If this debate doesn’t interest you, you might be surprised by this – it’s a very well-constructed movie. It should spur a few thoughts.
This was a review for the 2023 movie “The Artifice Girl”. Did you enjoy this movie or did it make you want to shut your systems down? Let us know in the comments below.