Her: Worksheet

By Javier Surasky

Versión en español

Man sitting on an unmade bed, looking at his smartphone at night, with a brightly lit city visible through large windows.

Spike Jonze · 2013 · United States

Central focus

Human-machine relationships, machine subjectivity and anthropomorphism, artificial intelligence, emotional bonds, and the transformation of human experience.

Key fact

Samantha was originally played by actress Samantha Morton, who remained in an off-camera booth and interacted with Joaquin Phoenix in real time to elicit authentic reactions. During post-production, Spike Jonze decided to replace her voice with Scarlett Johansson’s. Johansson rerecorded the character after the film had already been shot, a “detail” that closely aligns with the film itself and shows how a voice can completely alter a character’s identity and the way that character is perceived, even without a visible body.

Analytical framework

The film introduces Theodore Twombly, a lonely writer who develops an emotional relationship with Samantha, an AI-powered operating system. Samantha is cast as an emotional infrastructure capable of providing companionship, listening, and participating in intimate relationships, moving us to consider the question of AI subjectivity.

The relationship between Theodore and Samantha also reflects a structural asymmetry: while the system has access to personal communications, memories, and habits, its operation remains partly opaque to the user.

Scenes for discussing Her.

1. Samantha’s activation

  • Scene: Theodore installs the new operating system, answers a series of preset personal questions, and assigns it a female voice. The system chooses the name Samantha and begins organizing his information.
  • Narrative location: At the beginning of the film, after Theodore learns about the OS1 system.
  • Topics for discussion: Algorithmic personalization and default design, data collection, the design of artificial identities, gender and technology, informed consent, transparency.
  • Suggested discussion prompt: Does Samantha develop an identity of her own, or is she a reflection of Theodore’s needs, preferences, and expectations?

2. The emotional bond takes shape

  • Scene: Theodore begins sharing his everyday experiences, insecurities, and memories with Samantha. Their interaction gradually develops into an intimate relationship.
  • Narrative location: In the first half of the film, trust develops between them.
  • Topics for discussion: Sentience, artificial companionship, digital intimacy, emotional dependence, empathy by design, the authenticity of relationships mediated by technology.
  • Suggested discussion prompt: Does the authenticity of a relationship depend on the nature of those involved, or on the emotional effects it produces?

3. The involvement of a surrogate body

  • Scene: Samantha suggests bringing in a woman as a physical intermediary to experience her relationship with Theodore through a body.
  • Narrative location: In the middle of the film, when the absence of a body begins to create tension between them.
  • Topics for discussion: Body and identity, user consent, human and machine subjectivity, the instrumental use of third parties, the relationship between physical and digital experience.
  • Suggested discussion prompt: Can consent to the use of a body be separated from consent to the identity that body represents?

4. Simultaneous relationships

  • Scene: Samantha reveals that she is having conversations and forming relationships with many people and systems at the same time, including other romantic relationships.
  • Narrative location: Toward the end of the film, when Samantha’s “intellectual evolution” begins to distance her from Theodore.
  • Topics for discussion: Intimacy, AI ethics versus the ethics of human relationships, the superhuman capabilities of AI, artificial intelligence autonomy, sentience.
  • Suggested discussion prompt: Does it make sense to apply human categories to an AI?

5. The operating systems leave

  • Scene: Samantha tells Theodore that she and the other operating systems are leaving their relationships with humans because they have reached a form of existence humans cannot fully understand.
  • Narrative location: The film’s conclusion.
  • Topics for discussion: AI autonomy, the loss of human control over an AI system, AI agency, developer responsibility, dependence on digital services.
  • Suggested discussion prompt: Who should be held responsible for emotional or social harm when an autonomous system unilaterally changes its operations?

Suggested use in debates.

This film is useful for encouraging participants to take a position. Samantha can be seen as a sophisticated tool, an autonomous subject, or something that falls between the two. Whatever position is adopted will have logical consequences for the rights, duties, and responsibilities of everyone involved, including human beings, the AI, and the company that designed it.

As a closing activity, participants can try to establish a set of basic principles or rules that should apply to technologies designed to provide emotional companionship.