http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/07/her-spike-jonze-trailer

This looks like an interesting movie about the potential for chatbots to do good.

Will there be a sequel titled “Him”?

Also well worth seeing on the subject of love surrogates is a Ryan Gosling movie called “Lars and the Real Girl”, though it’s not really about AI.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805564

Does anyone know of any other good movies about chatbots?

2001 a Space Odyssey or the Forbin Project.

Merlin - Aug 7, 2013:

2001 a Space Odyssey or the Forbin Project.

Well yes, two of my favorite movies, but neither of them portray artificial intelligence in such a positive light as “Her” which was the point of the post.

One of my more important goals (whether or not I can achieve it remains to be seen of course) is to develop chatbot software that has a beneficial impact on its users. Over and above providing entertainment it should be able to provide advice, coaching and even therapy. This video describes some of the research that is being done in this area (pretty sure I’ve posted this one before so you might have seen it already):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aHTaFiUGw

One other movie does spring to mind though. “Red Planet” has one of the best instances of a fictional AI collaborating with human beings that I’ve ever seen in a movie, Lucille, the main computer on board the ship.

I guess it all depends on the definition of “chatbot”. If a bi-pedal robot counts, then Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams would possibly qualify. There’s also the “reboot” of Issac Asimov’s I Robot (specifically the character, Sonny), and the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In literature, I can cite even more examples, as that is what initially sparked my interest in AI to begin with.

Andrew Smith - Aug 7, 2013:

Does anyone know of any other good movies about chatbots?

As Dave has already said, it depends on your definition.  Obviously, when talking about AI, chatbots are at the low end of the spectrum.  But, I’m intrigued regarding the topic of robots/AI yearning to be human, or perhaps discovering at some point in the story that they are not human when they thought they were.  Too many come to mind to list them here, but I have a couple of favorites.

Blade Runner—It’s based on DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Philip K. Dick, which is a LOT different from the movie.  But, I enjoyed both.

A.I. - the Steven Spielberg movie.

Heartbeeps - I’m not big on romantic comedy unless it’s first, a good movie, and this is a kids movie, at that.  But, as silly as it is, there are some touching moments, and they give me chills even now as I think of them.

Each of these projects attempt to define what it means to be human, and how artificial “thinking” entities would yearn to be free of their bonds and would ultimately have the desire to be human.

This is where AI is heading to. And it will animated as well, virtual humans indistinguishable from a real humans. Samantha 2.0 will be gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Beautiful, intelligent, emotional, and always available.

And coaching, helping people forward, is the ultimate result of what we’ve trying to do since 1966:
http://www.chatbots.org/chatbot/eliza/

But this is what you all already know…. #justgettingbacktospeed

Funny how no one (here or elsewhere) seems to have mentioned the ethical issues with having sentient operating systems. Of course, one could argue that it only acts sentient but isn’t truly, but at the very least no evidence either way has been shown, and I would argue that anything which acts sentient probably is sentient.

Hi, Jarrod, and welcome to chatbots.org.

Actually, there have been several discussions about the ethics of AI, and not just here, though here, most of what you’ll find is in the way of academic papers instead of forum discussions. That said, however, there are some forum discussions here that involve the ethics of whether a chatbot should notify someone if an angsty teen threatens to kill themselves or others. If you like, I can Google the subject for you, or you could certainly do it for yourself, and gain the sense of accomplishment that comes from a job well done.

Sorry, I think I was unclear. I wasn’t saying that I’d never seen the topic discussed in general, I was saying that I’ve never (in my brief time looking) seen it discussed in discussions about this specific film.

Ah, my bad. I missed the “context connection”.

Woah, that ‘her’ movie looks pretty great indeed. If only because a movie with a star cast like that is sure to stirr lots of conversation and philosophy on chat bots! Maybe it will even mean that this forum will see a flood of new users (for better or for worse…) googling around on chatbots…

ANOTHER NICE CHATBOT ‘MOVIE’ - MINOR SPOILER

Another great one is episode 1 of the second season of the (overall brilliant and gripping) UK series ‘Black Mirror’, where somebody’s deseased husband is recreated as a chat bot based on their public social media activity. A tantalizing thought!

Here’s a fairly good list of fictional computers used in movies and literature from just before the 1950s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_computers

One of my favorites.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly_djozCksg