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The potential impact of Artificial Intelligence as we know it today has, without a doubt, been part of the human psyche since stories started being told. Characters such as Pygmalion and his statue, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, for example, are parts of the Artificial Intelligence universe too. Artifice Girl by Franklin Ritch is an exceptionally captivating film and it analyses the moral concerns surrounding AI, even getting into the ‘A.I. dystopia’ side of the argument. Franklin’s work explores the multifaceted realities of AI. Dig deeper into the ‘AI’ world and you’ll invariably inquire into what it truly means to be human. In the film, Ritch portrays himself in the leading role as well as taking on the responsibility of being the creator writer, and director which enables him to concentrate more directly on the boundaries between his fiction and what is considered real.
This makes me think of “Blade Runner” as well as its source material, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? What if an android has an artificial memory of a childhood that was never real? Then would it actually be a memory to the Android? It does not have the capability to distinguish. It feels real. Often, what is and is not “real” is of no significance. This is where things get disturbing and “The Artifice Girl” lies exactly in that disturbing realm.
Sectioned into three parts, each lasting around thirty minutes, The Artifice Girl starts in a dark, enclosed, and bleak room where a man named Gareth (Ritch) is brought in for some interrogation. The two agents in charge (Sinda Nichols and David Girard) adopt a hostile tactic, scaring and bullying Gareth (who is far more savvy than he seems). The problem is on an active project meant to deal with tracking and hunting pedophiles, and online predators, building technological means to fish these disgusting creeps out into the open. Their latest approach is Cherry, a digital 9-year-old girl doll who goes into chat rooms, participates on live chats, and in the process collects information on her regular viewers and even those who send her messages. She is a perfect bait. She is able to self-modify beyond what the people who programmed her have created.
With “The Artifice Girl” the storyline is minimal. The tiny number of scenes which take place within the same setting lead to an intensely claustrophobic feeling in the film. The characters sit, stand, and pace around various walls adorned with no windows while they struggle with the more profound issues at hand pondering the Turing Test, game theory, the NLP, the uncanny valley, and the greater complication of whether “Cherry” is sentient or is it simply the way people view her sentience. At one point, Gareth and the two agents engage on a heated debate on whether the digitized child, ‘Cherry,’ can actually consent to anything. Everything about her is so lifelike. Her online presence is terrifying. It’s like the “adults” who care for Cherry need to constantly remind themselves: “She’s not real, she’s not real, she’s not real.”
I don’t want to explain too much of the story as it will ruin the plot. Ritch’s work is thoughtful in every single way hence making “The Artifice Girl” a mentally engaging and challenging work. Captivating in their own way, the small cast was excellent, however, the dialogues of the young Matthews who performed them were perplexingly dry as he spoke in a monotone.
There’s a lot of dialogue, and yet “The Artifice Girl” doesn’t come off pedantic or “talky” with the exception of the third and final scene where the overly long monologues start to drag. It’s emotional even as it’s cerebral, and vice versa. There’s a great moment when Cherry, the A.I. is interrogated on what she feels about something. In a monotone voice, Cherry replies, “Aspiring to human nature is not something I do.” Given all she has “seen” online, one can’t blame her.
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