The Artifice Girl

After FBI Agents discover a revolutionary computer program that utilizes a digital child to catch online predators, they quickly realize that the AI's advancement is far more rapid and incalculable than they could ever have imagined, posing unforeseen challenges and unsettling consequences not just for the future of the technology, but also for mankind.

I don’t want to give too much away about the Artifice Girl or what happens in it, or the specific issues raised and discussed—not that it’s a huge mystery or anything, but the discovery is part of the experience—so just to be clear from the start… Despite the short and vague review, I liked this film a lot, and I would definitely recommend it.

An exploration of the ethical questions irrevocably entangled with the inevitable development of Artificial Intelligence, the film follows a team of Special Agents who use a revolutionary computer program designed to catch online predators, with it’s main tool being a incredibly lifelike digital child. But the team soon discovers that the AI's rapid evolution is beyond their control, forcing them to face some unsettling questions about a future that may have already arrived.

Eschewing the usual AI cautionary tale of something like, say… Terminator or War Games, or even something like Avengers: Age of Ultron, where the newly sentient AI spends less than a minute online and as a result, decides that the best course of action is to wipe out humanity, the Artifice Girl takes a different track.

It’s fair to say that the Artifice Girl is a talky film, that it’s dialogue-heavy.

This film is more about the responsibilities of being a parent, than it is a robot apocalypse. And not just as parents, either, it’s about the responsibilities we all share as a society, towards the new lives and new worlds we’re creating, as well as the world we’re leaving behind, all while exploring the idea of how the emotional baggage you have accumulated in your own life can end up weighing down not just you, but the generations to come.

The Artifice Girl mainly takes place in one single room. This gives the events the unavoidable feeling of being an adaptation of stage play—it’s not—and for once, I’d say that this feeling doesn’t hurt it… for the most part. The small cast is impressive. Their chemistry is strong, their conversations are all snappy, engrossing, emotionally engaging, and they approach some big complex ideas and thorny ethical questions in clear and understandable terms. It’s all very well done.

But yeah, it’s definitely a talky film.

I suspect that this will make it a difficult watch for most audiences, as the act of sitting still, of quietly watching and listening, of paying attention and considering ideas, is usually just too much to ask of them. But I think it’s definitely worth the effort with this film.

In the end, The Artifice Girl concerns itself with the question of what it means to be human, and then it manages to deliver a surprisingly satisfying answer.

Well done. Very well done.