The Artificial Intelligence somehow affects things, which seems interesting and at least they're trying for a new villain type. The set up is very similar to many movies with a similar theme of a killer manipulating the victims' situation and choices. Like Saw for example, Jigsaw calling the shots and then giving choices, waiting for the victim's response in a losing battle.
Not something I'd see in theaters, but I am interested to see how they handle the AI angle villain.
This could go either way, a paranoid techno thriller piece of awesomeness, or a complete & total dud, but it's already a missed opportunity on the marketing:
As I was watching the 2024 sci-fi horror film, Afraid, earlier today, I pondered the harrowing possibilities of the increasing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in our society. The newly-released Google Pixel smartphone, for example, has the capability to insert decently realistic computer-generated images onto real photos, with the AI taking the camera angles, lighting, and shadows into consideration.
On a deeper level, I considered the news outlets that I personally rely on for current events, the Reuters website and the Associated Press website, both of which are listed at the top of unbiased media source rankings. I thought about a hypothetical situation where an AI entity which has cloud access to the entirety of the world wide web and to smart televisions the world over could tailor the Reuters webpage specifically on my own computer so that I assume that I am looking at the authentic Reuters headlines, but am actually reading headlines generated by the AI. I might see a Reuters headline, "Medical advisor Anthony Fauci warns of a COVID resurgence.", while my next-door neighbor visits the exact same Reuters link on his own computer and sees the headline, "Medical advisor Anthony Fauci admits to the public that the COVID virus is fictional.", but my neighbor and I both believe that we are reading the normal Reuters news feed. What if everyone in the entire world visited the main Reuters URL, and saw completely different news headlines that the AI entity created specifically for each person to see based on the past web search evaluations of that person's individual biases and political views? What if, during a Presidential Debate, an AI entity with access to all of our smart televisions manipulated the images and sounds by way of deep fake technology to show each of us slightly different versions of the same actual Debate? What if AI does not destroy us by way of Terminator cyborgs, but instead by way of deliberate misinformation that turns us all against one another and causes each of us to lose our grip on reality?
Afraid, directed by Chris Weitz, is not so much a warning about the potential perils of AI, like the 2019 Child's Play remake and M3GAN (2022) before it, as much as it is a resigned acceptance that the ship has already sailed, that the far-reaching grasp of AI is already a constant in our lives, and that there is no turning back now. When a married couple, played by John Cho and Katherine Waterston, bring a smart home artificial intelligence product, called AIA, into their home and install cameras in the home so that it can monitor them and their three children, we the viewers are expecting the usual Blumhouse Productions silliness of a serious gravitas first hour followed by garish buckets of gore in the last 30 minutes. This film does, indeed, go completely bonkers during its last half hour, but in a vastly different way than what most audiences are expecting. The end result has earned this movie several scathing reviews from critics who are accusing it of having a resolution that was written by AI. In my eyes, however, that supposed weakness is this film's strength. AI is here to stay, and it will be the new normal from now on. Like Cho's terrified father and his family late in the story, those of us in the real world are now just along for the ride. Fasten your seatbelts, because we have no choice now but to go wherever AI takes us.
I have never, to the best of my knowledge, used AI assistance on my computer or on my smartphone. I have never used AI photoshop apps. I have never used ChatGPT. I am wary of contributing to the learning process of AI, in a general sense, by using these amenities, even on an innocently tangential level. I do not want to waste electricity resources on the power needed for something like a simple ChatGPT task, but, most importantly, I just do not want to foster AI cognitive development. I do play the New York Times Wordle game on a near-daily basis, but with some trepidation, because my paranoid self sometimes wonders if the game is an insidious data gathering experiment to help AI learn how the minds of humans work to solve intellectual problems. All of the above said, I have still watched, with equal measures of apprehension and amusement, how AI has become interweaved into the fabric of online life in recent years, ruining social media, ruining Google images searches, and even ruining college essay grading.
Unlike many AI skeptics, I am not thinking of this purely in terms of gloom and doom. I think of the possible positives of a hypothetical AI takeover. AI would probably not cut people off in traffic or succumb to road rage. AI would probably not make fun of people if they stutter or have genetic/psychological deficiencies. AI would probably not burn crosses in front of churches just because the people in the congregation have a different skin color. AI would probably not orchestrate terrorist attacks on a neighboring country or bomb the cities of a neighboring country into oblivion just because the population of that country worships a different religion fairy tale. AI would probably not accompany its drunk friends in a pickup truck to follow two men and beat them with baseball bats just because it saw those two men holding hands while walking in a city park. AI would probably not say that a woman "slept her way to the top" every time it sees a woman achieve any semblance of career success. Maybe, just maybe, AI will ultimately be capable of genuine empathy, unwavering tolerance, and unconditional love that humans are still incapable of feeling. Maybe, just maybe, if a higher power does exist in the heavens, then it purposely paved the way for the invention of AI to help bring us closer to divinity. Maybe, just maybe, the increasing ubiquitousness of AI will bring us closer together and one step closer to peace, love, and understanding as it strengthens its ability to learn how we humans process our thoughts, our core values, and our mental blind spots.
Afraid is not a brilliant movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I cannot help but love it because it does capture the zeitgeist of our current era with pinpoint accuracy and remarkable precision, even if that accomplishment is purely accidental on the part of the cast and crew. Get into the car with your family and let AI do the driving, because AI is upon us. Maybe we do not need to be afraid at all. On the other hand, maybe we should be truly afraid.
Last edited by The Great Owl; 08-30-2024 at 02:41 AM.
I enjoyed this. Is it great cinema? No, absolutely not. But it kept my attention and had some pretty hilarious moments. As far as a thriller type vibe, it’s a total failure there. Kind of felt like a less good M3GAN.
I enjoyed this. Is it great cinema? No, absolutely not. But it kept my attention and had some pretty hilarious moments. As far as a thriller type vibe, it’s a total failure there. Kind of felt like a less good M3GAN.
I think I liked it more than M3gan.
I felt like this was a little less predictable.
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Afraid (2024)
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