Five Instances of Smart Homes in Modern Movies and TV
“Her”
Aside from being a beautiful movie, “Her” tells the story of why technology experts have been putting ethics at the forefront of artificial intelligence development.
The film starts Joaquin Phoenix as a socially awkward divorcee Theodore Twombly and Scarlett Johansson as a virtual AI Alexa-like assistant that names herself Samantha. The relationship between the two starts off how it was intended, with Samantha helping Twombly organize his life, including reading his emails. However, the relationship quickly turns romantic as Samantha proclaims that she’s “becoming much more than what they programmed.” The two end up falling in love (who wouldn’t fall in love with her voice?), until Twombly learns that Samantha has been talking to thousands of other people.
I know integrators and their clients are passionate about this technology, but let’s all agree to not fall in love with our smart home’s virtual assistant. Better yet, let’s all agree to not use ScarJo’s voice in a smart home assistant.
