In May 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stirred up controversy by mentioning the 2013 film “Her” while discussing the uniqueness of the newest version of ChatGPT. Shortly after, Scarlett Johansson, who voiced Samantha, the AI character in “Her,” accused OpenAI of using her voice without permission after she had declined their offer for her to be the voice of ChatGPT’s new virtual assistant. Johansson proceeded to sue OpenAI and was asked to testify before Congress. This conflict illustrates a broader interaction between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, known as the “sci-fi feedback loop.” This is the subject of my doctoral research, focusing on how science fiction and technological advancements influence each other.
This relationship is reciprocal and can develop over several decades, creating an ongoing cycle. One notable instance is lunar travel. Jules Verne’s 1865 book “From the Earth to the Moon” and H.G. Wells’ works inspired the early depiction of moon travel in the 1902 film “A Trip to the Moon.” The writings of Verne and Wells also motivated future rocket scientists like Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth, and Oberth’s famous student, Wernher von Braun. Their innovations, including von Braun’s V-2 rocket from World War II, inspired science fiction movies such as 1950’s “Destination Moon,” which featured a rocket resembling the V-2. Films like “Destination Moon” helped increase public support for significant government funding of the space program. The sci-fi feedback loop generally follows a pattern. Initially, the technological environment of a time informs its science fiction. The personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, directly inspired cyberpunk authors like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.
Subsequently, science fiction influences real-world technological development. In his 1992 novel “Snow Crash,” Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” to describe a virtual 3-D world accessed via virtual reality goggles. Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have been attempting to create this metaverse ever since. The video game Second Life, launched in 2003, tried this: it allowed players to live in virtual homes, attend virtual events, and even earn virtual money through virtual jobs. This technology further inspired fiction. My research shows that sci-fi author Ernest Cline was influenced by Second Life when writing the metaverse in his bestselling novel “Ready Player One.” The cycle persisted: Oculus VR (now known as Meta Reality Labs) employees were given copies of “Ready Player One” as they developed virtual reality headsets. When Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, it wanted to lead in creating the metaverse, although its ambitious plans have since been scaled back.
Another sci-fi franchise deeply connected to this loop is “Star Trek,” which debuted in 1966 during the space race. Steve Perlman, who invented Apple’s QuickTime, was inspired by a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode featuring Lt. Commander Data processing multiple streams of audio and video. Rob Haitani, who designed the Palm Pilot’s operating system, indicated the Enterprise bridge influenced its interface. My research also found that the show’s Holodeck, a room simulating any environment, inspired the name and development of Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality glasses. Circling back to OpenAI and “Her,” in the film, the character Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, acquires an AI assistant named “Samantha,” voiced by Johansson, and develops romantic feelings for her. ChatGPT-4o, the latest generative AI version, appears to create similar user-machine relationships, speaking and “understanding” users in an empathetic way similar to a romantic partner. It’s likely the portrayal of AI in “Her” influenced OpenAI’s developers. Besides Altman’s tweet, ChatGPT-4o’s promotional videos depict a chatbot interacting with a job candidate before an interview, offering support like an AI companion might. Ars Technica noted the AI portrayed was “strikingly lifelike” and willing “to laugh at your jokes and your silly hat.” Interestingly, a previous generation of chatbots inspired the film “Her.”
Spike Jonze, the director and screenwriter, began writing the screenplay after interacting with ALICE, an early chatbot with a defined personality. ALICE won the Loebner Prize three times, awarded yearly until 2019 to AIs coming closest to passing the Turing Test, a benchmark for demonstrating AI indistinguishable from human intelligence. The sci-fi feedback loop is timeless. The capacity for AI to form human relationships is a persistent theme explored in both fiction and reality.