Lecture by Prof. Timothy Miller, “The Rise of the Artificial Boyfriend: Loving the Algorithm Across Global Media” on 4/25 @ 1pm
Our last faculty Brown Bag talk of the Spring 2023 term will feature Professor Timothy Miller on Tuesday April 25th at 1pm on Zoom. Prof. Miller's talk is titled "The Rise of the Artificial Boyfriend: Loving the Algorithm Across Global Media."
Abstract: The artificial boyfriend is far from new, but it is newly ubiquitous. In the past few years, android Adonises and holographic hunks have proliferated across narrative media in a multitude of languages, and this paper will examine several recent examples of non-Anglophone screen texts that feature a heterosexual woman courted by an artificial intelligence, including Maria Schrader’s 2021 German-language film I’m Your Man [Ich bin dein Mensch]; the 2022 Thai film AI Love You; the 2008 Japanese manga adaptation Absolute Boyfriend; and the 2020 South Korean television series My Holo Love. On the one hand, these “robot rom-coms” reverse the dominant gender dynamics of English language science fiction’s fembot-filled history, potentially bringing valuable new perspectives on what it might mean to fall in love with or at least through the algorithm. These works depict artificial romantic partners powered by algorithms that optimize for user happiness, and invite us to reflect in different ways on how our relationships with other humans have already become increasingly algorithmically mediated. With the crucial exception of I’m Your Man, in these narratives we find that the artificially intelligent partner must finally abolish itself in order to make room for a “real” relationship between the two humans it has brought together. What appears on the surface to be a rejection of virtual companionship in favor of “real” human connection relies on embracing algorithmically-driven modern tech products as the best means to achieve such connection, uncritically accepting the surveillance and algorithmic mediation inherent in even present social relations.
image credit: robot android in love licensed under CC0 / public domain declaration
image credit: brown paper bag by clikr, licensed under CC0 / public domain declaration