With sex robots being coded with AI-response technology, and virtual reality allowing users to see their AI companions up close and personal, we’re inching closer to Stepford territory.
When OpenAI launched the voice assistant ChatGPT-4o in May, users quickly noticed some eerie similarities to the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her. Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the film’s AI assistant, Samantha, even called out the company for producing a voice so indistinguishable from her own. Still, if Her is instructive of the present state of AI companions, Stepford Wives presents a blueprint for the future. AI has now been given a voice; in the future, it will have a body.