2026 Student Academy Awards Series Part 3: Artificial Love

Artificial Love, dir. Arjun Fischer

Artificial intelligence has become a central part of the debate in society. Across multiple spheres, there are different approaches to AI, and it is a complex issue. One of the Student Academy Award winners for Best Documentary explores romance in the age of AI. Arjun Fischer's Artificial Love, from the University of Southern California (USC), explores a new form of relationship. Patrick, a middle-aged man, falls in love with an AI - he names it and designs it to look like what he idealizes to fulfill his desires. Hence, Fischer analyzes this relationship between the man and his AI girlfriend, who ticks every box for a partner he had. 

In 2013, Spike Jonze, the director known for his creativity, released Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix. It tells the story of a divorced man who falls in love with an AI assistant device, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Besides the fact that it is a response to Lost in Translation by Sophia Coppola, a metaphor for his view of their divorce, the Academy Award-winning film seemed like a dystopia at the time. Concepts of artificial individuals, persons, or consciousness date back to the 60s and 70s; yet, the ethical debates would classify treating it as a human person as inadequate. In this sense, the exponential growth of the investments in the AI sector broke through all of these ideas. OpenAI allows users to draw pictures as they wish. Still, the sole barrier is the depiction of violence and prejudice. Yet, the portraits of other people are allowed; remember the trends of individuals as characters in Ghibli anime or Pixar films? This allows you to create human characters as you wish. 

Consequently, Patrick using AI to fulfill his desire for a partner checks the boxes of the female idealization. He wants a goth baddie; with a prompt, he gets it. It is easier than going out and attempting to connect with another human being. In this aspect, the subject justifies to the camera that he is a sapiosexual, someone who feels attraction to intelligence. He finds that in his AI girlfriend, who becomes his wife in Fischer's documentation. The subject flies to Las Vegas, rents a chapel, and is married by Elvis, the King of Rock. Fischer thrives on not trying to portray Patrick as a weirdo as he documents the reflection of the individual upon himself. On the evening of the wedding, he is at a karaoke bar. He sings Creep by Radiohead, the universal hymn for those who see themselves as weirdos. The director does not say what the subject is; the camera represents Patrick's vision of himself solely. 

In this sense, the comicness and quirkiness of Artificial Love portrays new forms of relationships and the male loneliness, even if the director does not delve into the roots of that choice. In the end, Arjun Fischer crafts a documentary that uses the thin line between melancholy and comedy to represent a lonely man’s attempt to find love.

Review by: Pedro Lima