The nuts and bolts of love

Missing the point?: Spike Jonze (right) with Joaquin Phoenix on the set of ‘Her’. The film presents a world in which the questionable status quo – that of the ownership of a ‘person’, even an artificial personality – is presented as unproblematic. – Filepic

Her avoids tackling the ethics of human-AI romance head on, and misses a chance to really say something about our conception of love.

THERE’S a scene early on in Spike Jonze’s new movie, Her, wherein Samantha, a disembodied, intuitive operating system, reveals to her owner, Theodore, that she has read his entire e-mail archive. She tells him she knows about his impending divorce, and gently asks him when he’ll be ready to date again.