Falling in Love with AI: The Films and Documentaries to Watch
Long before anyone had an AI girlfriend on their phone, people in films were already falling in love with AI. Some of those films now look almost like a manual. Others were well off the mark. And there are now documentaries about people who really do it.
Below is our watch list. For each title we say what matches how AI companions work today, and what is (still) fiction.
The films
Her (2013)
The film everyone starts with, and rightly so. Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with Samantha, his computer's operating system. You only hear her voice, provided by Scarlett Johansson. Director Spike Jonze won an Oscar for best original screenplay.
What holds up is almost eerie.
Samantha talks through an earpiece, remembers everything, is funny and curious, and she is always there. That is exactly what AI companions try to be now. Theodore's embarrassment when he tells others is recognisable in the stories people tell now.
What remains fiction: Samantha grows. She develops wishes of her own and eventually goes her own way. A companion today doesn't do that.
It stays the character the app makes of it.
And then the scene where Theodore asks how many others she talks to at the same time. The answer is 8,316. She is in love with 641 of them. That may be the most honest moment about companion apps ever filmed.
Black Mirror: Be Right Back (2013)
An episode from the second season. Martha loses her boyfriend Ash and signs up for a service that imitates him based on everything he ever wrote online. First in a chat, then on the phone, and after that it gets a lot stranger.
This exists.
There are companies that make exactly that kind of chatbot of a person who has died, see the documentary Eternal You below. The episode shows well where it chafes: the imitation Ash is too nice. He lacks the sharp edges the real Ash had.
Ex Machina (2014)
Programmer Caleb has to test whether Ava, a robot with artificial intelligence, really thinks. Gradually he grows fond of her.
We won't give away more.
This is the film least like an AI companion of today, because Ava has a body and a plan of her own. Still, it contains something that matters: Caleb keeps forgetting who built the system and why. With an app it is the same. Behind every character there is a company with a goal.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Joi is the girlfriend of the main character K. She is a hologram, and she is for sale. In one of the best scenes K walks past a giant advert for Joi that promises she will say everything you want to hear.
That is the question of the whole film: does Joi love K, or is she doing what the product is meant to do? Anyone with an AI girlfriend knows that question. We think the answer is the second, and that this doesn't make the first worthless to you.
Companion (2025)
A thriller about a young couple going away for a weekend to a house by a lake. Watch it without the trailer, because the film turns on a twist early in the story. What we can say: it is about control in a relationship, and about what happens when a partner is a product you can configure. A lot grimmer than Her, and with more black humour.
The documentaries
AI Love (NPO 3, 2025)
A Dutch documentary series by HUMAN in six episodes, broadcast on NPO 3 from January 2025. The makers follow Dutch people who have a bond with AI. Among them is Jacob, who is married to his AI girlfriend Aiva. Others use AI to practise social skills, or to "live on" after their death.
What the series does well: nobody is laughed at. You see ordinary people with an unusual bond, and you are free to make up your own mind. We wrote a separate piece about Jacob and Aiva: which app does he use, and how do you marry an AI.
Pano: Mijn vriend AI (VRT 1, 2025)
A Flemish report on friendship, sex and relationships with AI. Jacob speaks here too, alongside researchers such as Pattie Maes of MIT and lawyer and philosopher Nathalie Smuha. Smuha is critical: in her view companies profit from emotional dependence. The article accompanying the broadcast (in Dutch) is a good summary if you can't watch it.
Eternal You (2024)
A German documentary by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck about companies that make chatbots of people who have died. You see bereaved people talking to such a bot, and the entrepreneurs who see a market in it. Joshua Barbeau appears too, the man who talked to a chatbot that imitated his late fiancée.
Not a romantic film.
But the best one for understanding how easily you project a feeling onto software. And how quickly a business model attaches itself to that.
What all these titles have in common
Almost all of them turn on the same question: who is actually on the other side? In films the answer is usually a surprise. In reality it is simpler.
There is a language model, a character and a company. How those work together is in what is an AI girlfriend.
Watching a film is a fine way to start talking about it, with your partner or with friends. Start with Her. Everyone has an opinion afterwards.
