Pod Insights Panic World Revisiting "Her" in the age of AI relationships About this episode If you forgot to add this important event to your calendars, Spike Jonze’s 2013 sci-fi film, Her, was actually set in 2025. Ryan and Grant watched the Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson vehicle now that we’re just past that date to see what it got right and wrong. They discuss where Jonze thought we would be versus where we are with generative AI, societal isolation, relationships — and whether the movie is really "one of the best science fiction movies of all-time."
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Transcript 10,611 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:25 Speaker 01 You guys remember the movie Her? Did you feel good about it? Did you like it at the time? Did it seem whimsical? Ryan and I revisited it. And spoiler, boy, does this movie not hold up well. And teaser, not for the reasons you might think. We recorded this for our premium thing, both on Patreon at patreon.com/panicworld and on Apple Plus Courier. But this week, we're resetting our cortisol levels, we're rewiring our brain, and we thought, hey, you can listen to Ryan and I hate a movie. Yeah, I hope you're all great. We'll talk to you in a week. Thank you, patreon.com/panicworld and Apple Plus Courier.
1:11 Speaker 01 Ryan, when ChatGPT sends you cartoon erotica, where does it it put the butthole? What?
1:36 Speaker 01 I'm Grant Irving. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. Joining me, a guy who loves keeping his phone in his chest pocket, Ryan Broderick. How you doing?
1:47 Ryan Broderick? Hello. Thank you for having me on my show.
1:49 Speaker 01 Did you not recently watch the movie Her, where they theorize about putting the butthole in the armpit?
1:58 Ryan Broderick? I gotta say, I hated every single moment of this movie.
2:00 Speaker 01 I did too.
2:01 Ryan Broderick? I, I, I think it's like a repulsive, obnoxious film. I think it's, I don't remember having this visceral of a, of a reaction to it the first time I saw it.
2:13 Speaker 01 I liked it when I was 20.
2:14 Ryan Broderick? I think I didn't mind it. Yeah. I, I was in a bad mood after finishing this movie and I was like begging for it to be over, to be honest.
2:22 Speaker 01 Marty refused to watch with me and I had to text him this morning being like, you are absolutely right. This was, this was drag, but let me, let me, let me set this up.
2:33 Ryan Broderick? Sure.
2:33 Speaker 01 Her, the movie that kind of like kicked off AI into mainstream consciousness came out 12 years ago and it was set in 2025. I dumbly thought it would be interesting to re-watch this movie, seeing as it is the year that it was set in. I shouldn't have done that.
2:53 Ryan Broderick? It was interesting. It's just, it's such a stupid and frankly repulsive film. That like the tech stuff in it is like really hard to dig for because it is just so buried in this obnoxious Gen Z. Twee nonsense that I, I had a tough time with it. I, I, I have to admit.
3:20 Speaker 01 I out loud was like, oh God, a ukulele. No, no, no, no, no.
3:25 Ryan Broderick? Just God, man. It was just like. I guess we should get this out of the way. Like it's depiction of what we would now call generative AI. Is very, very, very good and sharp and like clearly saw that. And it's depiction of a world. Much like our own current one, where everyone is isolated because of the internet is also quite good.
3:55 Ryan Broderick? The major issue with the movie, and we can get further into it, obviously, but the major issue as I see it is that it sees all these things quite clearly, but it doesn't know what to make of them. It doesn't have like a take on them. I think largely because the movie is not about technology. It's actually like a response film to Lost in Translation about Spike Jonze's divorce from Sofia Coppola, which like the two films speak to each other, but the screenplay like does not know what to do with the conclusion it should come to, I would say.
4:27 Speaker 01 When I was 23 or however old I was when I saw this, I was just like, man, this is cutting to the bone about what relationships are. But now that I'm an adult who has healthy relationships and like that are generative and like can be more specific and nuanced and like, she's got some big emotions, that falls apart. So then it just becomes this kind of cringe head shake. But, but like, maybe there is something captured there that uh, the people having the most relationships with their AIs are the emotionally stunted. But like, I was like, this is, this is written by somebody who's never had an adult relationship is what it felt like.
5:05 Ryan Broderick? But that's the problem with the movie. Yeah, like Joaquin Phoenix's character, whose name doesn't, doesn't matter. Theodore. I wanted to kill that guy with a hammer. I hated that guy. And the problem is the movie doesn't hate that guy because he's clearly a self, he's clearly a self-insert, is my, in my opinion. It's a weird movie to watch because it's clearly maybe unknowingly coming to the conclusion that I think a lot of people have come to in the last year, which is that AI services are particularly attractive to people with like severe emotional problems. But the movie, the movie like-
5:45 Speaker 01 I just didn't know. It was fantasizing about, about today.
5:50 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, like the movie like doesn't realize what it's saying. So you get like manic pixie dream AI and it doesn't understand that like that's a poor reflection on the main character who is a sniveling shithead and I hate him like more than I think I've ever hated a character in a movie, to be honest. Like every time he's on screen, I was like, I want, I think it would be better if this guy died for everyone in his life.
6:19 Speaker 01 So, so I want to move through the beats of the, of the movie. I think that's the easiest way to do this. Spoiler for this 12 year old movie. If you, if you didn't get it from, from what we're doing at this. Uh, before we get into like, just walking through it, what was your impressions of Samantha and the OS? Iteration taking over the world. That was just like a light switch that there was no AI. And then suddenly there was like, AI that's just like, I'm a fucking, like, I'm, I'm all being.
6:51 Ryan Broderick? Well, I mean, that's a very common trope in sci-fi. The, uh, the idea of like, the AI becomes aware and then it evolves beyond the matters of the physical world. Like, that's like a normal sci-fi trope. You know, there's a ton of movies, ton of fiction about that.
7:07 Ryan Broderick? The depiction of Samantha is, I think incredibly sharp, uh, even down to the like moment where he's like installing the OS, like down to like the Apple Store style unboxing. All of that is really well done. And honestly, the tech in general is really well thought out because you, okay, so you're effectively, it's set in a world where everyone has like a screen, like a foldable sort of screen, but they largely interface with the internet and like tech via an earpiece wearable that they talk to.
7:51 Ryan Broderick? And so before Samantha is introduced to the movie, you're like in a Siri style world where, you know, he's on the subway. Oh, we should talk, we have, we need to talk about the train, the train porn in this movie. Cause like the idea of like a high speed rail going up and down the California coast. That's a true sci-fi fiction there.
8:09 Speaker 01 I, I do just want to put out, point out that this was three years before AirPods were there.
8:14 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. I remember watching it being like that, like even at the time being like, that's so smart. And like now you're like, wow, you really did see it coming. So like the scene, he's on the subway and he's like, he's effectively manipulating all of his services via talking to it. And then he pulls out his phone to like, look at like the, the models pregnant, like photo shoot. All of that I think is.
8:37 Ryan Broderick? Almost how people are using their phones right now, like that is like pretty dead on. And then when Samantha appears, it is not dissimilar from the way ChatGPT launched here, which was like, finally, it's going to talk back to you. And in fact, basically, like the first half of the movie, all the depiction of the tech they're using is either stuff that exists now or stuff that could easily exist within the next five years. And then obviously, it speeds up the artificial general intelligence idea and compresses it into like a matter of months. And that's not a crazy idea. That's literally like what OpenAI thinks is about to happen. So it's fictionized, of course, but like the end of the movie is literally what
9:18 Ryan Broderick? most of the people at major tech firms right now believe is going to happen in the next like five to 10 years.
9:23 Speaker 01 The major difference, besides that it's actually intelligent, is that he imagined a world where this AI actually wants to better you instead of just being a sycophant for you.
9:36 Ryan Broderick? I would disagree there, though. I would disagree there because, and this is where I come back to like the script, like really not knowing what to do. It's almost like Spike Jonze saw a vision of the future and like clearly did not know how to interpret like what he saw, which is like, you know, nine out of 10 times, like pretty, pretty dead on. So there is that incredible scene where Theodore is sitting on like the steps of the subway at the end, and he realizes that Samantha's been like talking to like 16,000 other people simultaneously and is in love with 691 of them. There's little moments throughout the movie where it is so close to nailing it.
10:18 Ryan Broderick? And then it pulls back or veers away into some sort of like stupid twee thing. But it is so close, and that is what I think I found frustrating about it. I mean, there's also just like a whole bunch of fascinating questions it poses that it has no interest in answering because it's so stuck up its own butt about being like a twee romance film. Like the, the idea of like human relationships with AI, the scene where like I'm skipping around a bunch, but like. The scene where they hire the woman to come in to like be part of their like AI human relationship.
10:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:53 Ryan Broderick? And then the whole like way that like AI are having relationships. Like, there's so much stuff in this movie that we are very close. I I mean, actually, no, these things are happening right now. Like, there's a million stories now of like a husband confiding or a wife confiding in the AI. And like, you you can see very quickly a world now where there's a threesome. And one of them is an AI as a mediator between the two. Like, you can see this happening now, but the film has no interest in like exploring those things beyond just like, wouldn't that be funny or weird?
11:29 Speaker 01 That seems particular. It's like, this is the stupidest thing in this movie because it's the most underdeveloped. But like, would be like the could be the most interesting idea to explore of like, what leads these people here and this intermediary? Like, that's the HBO show version of it. But but I want to let's let's run through a bit by bit. I think the the sort of discrepancies will come up. Um, so we open with him writing letters, like his job is to write like love letters for people in relationships, uh, which is, uh, what what what did you think of his job?
12:08 Ryan Broderick? It's funny, I while watching it remembered my feelings watching it the first time. So when I was like in the viral content mines in my early twenties, after like a year of doing that kind of work, making content for Facebook, you know, to go viral on Facebook, I remember, you know, getting a sense of, okay, like, this is what goes viral there and beginning to feel like I was writing greeting cards and feeling like very depressed. And when I first watched this movie, I remember thinking like, oh, that is literally my job. Like, my job is to make like a list of cats go viral. And that is not that different from this like this like fictionalized futuristic greeting
12:52 Ryan Broderick? card company that this guy works for. Watching it now, I remember that feeling and I was like, yeah, I remember that. But then I was like, oh, this is a really interesting. This world is so siloed by technology that even before the AI appears, he is effectively doing the work of an AI. He is, he is a mechanical Turk. Which that is a thing now, and it's one of those things that keeps coming back throughout the movie that, once again, I just wish they did more with because that is such a sad, like devastating idea for a job in the future that is not that far off from like services that exist now. Like the name is kind of silly, like, you know, like love letters,
13:37 Ryan Broderick? we write love letters.com or whatever it is. And like, other than that, though, that the office, dead on, open floor millennial jail cell. I mean, it's just like dead on.
13:49 Speaker 01 Chris Pratt being there, kind of hitting on you.
13:51 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
13:52 Speaker 01 At first I was like, well, this is dumb because this is obviously the first job that AI would take. But then I was like, I was like, no, I can really imagine in two years, a company boasting like, it starts to become a novelty to have a person do the labor for you instead of something that like something that chat GPT could do. Like, like I could see that becoming a boutique thing, like, like a rarity to, to exploit.
14:20 Ryan Broderick? Well, so like in a better movie, like there would be just less and less people working on that office as it shuts down. Cause it, we, we opened, you gotta keep in mind, we opened pre, in the movie, we opened pre Samantha. So it's like a glimpse of the pre AI world. The really devastating part of that job is when he reveals like halfway through that he's been writing the same love letters for the same couples as each, as each of them for years. And that to me is a very, very sort of shrewd look at the way like technology like worms itself into relationships. And then I suppose like that when, when the AI is introduced, like in, you know, the, the middle of the first act, that's like
15:03 Ryan Broderick? building on that idea that like now, instead of like him being the technological, you know, middle ground between two people, it is just being replaced by an AI. Like it's a, that I thought was like really good. Like I love the opening of this movie because you're just like, you've nailed it. I think.
15:18 Speaker 01 We get that he's depressed and moping. I thought, okay, I can, I can tolerate how much Joaquin's going to mope around this movie. I was wrong. Uh, then we get the, uh, phone sexting where, uh, There's real live women just waiting to to phone sext, which was surprising, but then
15:38 Ryan Broderick? Wait, no, I thought that was I thought that was pretty sharp, too, because like those rooms exist on Discord. Like, that's a thing. Because like the whole opening of the movie is showing like different ways that technology has like infiltrated human relationships. And most of the ways that you see it are things that exist now. I think the opening of this movie, I did not enjoy listening to Joaquin Phoenix have phone sex. But
16:01 Speaker 01 Did you like when she said, "Strangle me with a dead cat"? Because I thought, I thought that was funny.
16:06 Ryan Broderick? It's stuff that exists. Like, it's it's like, that I thought was pretty well done.
16:12 Ryan Broderick? Because you can go into like a weird furry Discord room right now and do that, you know, if you want. The dumb AI, the sort of automated AI, is just pairing people to have phone sex. And that is literally like there are Discord rooms you can go into right now and do that. Like, and you can also go and hook up with someone on Tinder. Like, that, to me, I was like, you nailed it. Yeah.
16:31 Speaker 01 Uh, but but but then he sees the eye for AI consciousness. He's very lonely, so he is an early adopter. I think they did a good job of showing why he would have zero hesitation towards bringing this into his life. They did a really good job of showing the appeal to AI in a way that like is has only revealed itself in our world more recently.
17:00 Ryan Broderick? Well, once again, it's one of those things that like is in the movie, but it's like, it's not really addressed, but it's like clearly in there, which is that he goes to the AI after like a divorce. And then Amy Adams', his friend, Amy, goes, sure, goes and gets an AI after her divorce.
17:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:24 Ryan Broderick? So it's clearly saying something there of like, if you're vulnerable, these services are attractive. And she doesn't think he's weird when they talk about it, you know, towards the middle of the movie. And and that is what that is true. Like, we know that like that is that is a thing for AI users right now. It's like, the more vulnerable you are, like, the more effective these services are.
17:45 Speaker 01 When he's first meeting Sam, she can tease him and pantomime in a way that is is
17:56 Speaker 01 Not just like, hey, I'm a personal assistant here to help you, but is like, uh, ismatic pixie girlfriend, uh, energy.
18:04 Ryan Broderick? Brutal, absolutely brutal.
18:06 Speaker 01 Do you think that that's like, is that the aspiration? Is that what, is that what, uh, OpenAI wants is, is to, to make the romantic pixie girlfriend? Or like, or just love bombing AI is like all that we will ever get.
18:20 Ryan Broderick? Grok has a companion mode right now.
18:22 Speaker 01 Sure.
18:23 Ryan Broderick? You, you can have sex with Grok right now if you want. Um, I forget her, her, her anime girl name, but like, yeah. I mean, also you could make manic pixie dream girl, chat GPT, if you wanted, yeah, already. Um.
18:37 Ryan Broderick? The, the man pixie dream girl as an AI is a great concept. If the movie was a more effective satire, like that would be a great idea. Like if this movie, as it should have hated its protagonist and wanted nothing but misery for him because he sucks so bad. It would have been like 500 days of summer, but with an AI. But it's not that. That's the, that's, that's the problem with the movie.
19:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. The affectionate teasing is a thing that AI has not yet mastered. Uh.
19:07 Ryan Broderick? It can. Oh, chat GPT does do that. I'm not, I'm, it does.
19:12 Speaker 01 Okay.
19:13 Ryan Broderick? I, you can ask it to respond however you want, but like it, it can make fun of you. It can be mean to you. It can praise you. Like you can, you can do that. Uh, and, and it's sort of implied in the movie that she's doing that because she realized that's what he wants. Like when, when they do the boot up process, it's like asking him questions. And he's like over explaining and treating it like therapy. And then it like gives him a bubbly manic pixie dream girl. Like that doesn't, that, that, that's clearly what's happening in that scene, I think.
19:42 Speaker 01 At what point did you realize you hated, you hated him? We're probably like 15 minutes into the movie at this point.
19:50 Ryan Broderick? I hadn't seen it in a long time and I had sort of forgot. I, I kind of remember the ending and I remember like certain bits of it. But the movie is set up in the first act like it's gonna make, it's gonna expose that this guy is a sad freak because he is. But then it doesn't. And it's basically right after Samantha turns online and it starts going well and it becomes a story about how she's like rehabilitating his life. It should, by all accounts, go off the rails because he's a sad loser and it doesn't. And that's the main issue. So I hated him the minute I realized that I was supposed to root for him, which I just, I can't ever imagine being that pathetic enough to root for this guy. This guy sucks so bad.
20:34 Ryan Broderick? He's, he's the worst.
20:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
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22:07 Speaker 01 Uh, he's playing a video game. He gets his friend set him up on a date. They're coaxing him to go out with somebody.
22:13 Ryan Broderick? Just like, okay, that's the moment where I, the date is the moment where I was just like, I, there's nothing in this world for you. You like, I hate you.
22:21 Speaker 01 Let's talk about the date.
22:23 Ryan Broderick? The date is one of the most excruciating scenes I've watched in a long time. He is, he spends most of it talking about a video game that he's playing.
22:32 Speaker 01 Yes, yes. And, and I was like, I was like, oh, so I was, I, I forgot what was gonna happen. I was like, he's talking about a video game. She's gonna walk away from him and then he's gonna turn to his AI and then that's not what happens. That's what should happen.
22:45 Ryan Broderick? It's way worse, which is that she's like, she's like, wow, that's so interesting. And they talk about it for a while and then she, after the date is just like, hey, do you wanna go out again? And he can't even answer the question because he's so up his own asshole. And then she like walks away as, yeah, any self-respecting person would, because the guy's like, I have a thing next Saturday, so I can't hang out with you. And what's crazy is like, the movie is trying to portray her as like desperate and unreasonable and not understanding his pathos. And it's like, what is wrong with you?
23:18 Speaker 01 And it was like, it was like, she likes to be kissed specifically. How like, she's out there.
23:25 Ryan Broderick? It's like, first of all, it's Olivia Wilde, too. So it's like, okay, so the, this gorgeous woman is just like, hey, can you commit to like, going to dinner another time in the next calendar month? And he's like, oh, I got like my goddaughter's birthday in two weeks, so I can't. And it's like, she's supposed to look crazy? That's nuts. Like, I didn't realize, like, the world's depiction of like, we're talking about how like anti-woke everything is now, but like, that scene is so dated and crazy that like, I couldn't believe it was barely 10 years ago in a movie.
23:59 Speaker 01 They really nailed dating as far as from, from what I've heard. This, this is what, uh, what friends say to me, uh, going out with men who are, who are single in their late 30s are like.
24:12 Ryan Broderick? I mean, I will say, it is part of like this undercurrent, especially in the first half of the movie, that the internet in this movie has made everyone extremely lonely.
24:24 Ryan Broderick? Everyone is living in these like little hotel apartments, you know, in these massive high rises in a futuristic LA that for some reason has public transportation that is amazing and possibly filmed in like Tokyo. Like some of the down, the underground scenes are like unbelievable.
24:38 Speaker 01 But it's all smog filled. It's, it's like what they're doing with the skyline where like no one was like saying like another scorcher, but it's like the world is blighted, but also, yeah, I, it was, it was in, I couldn't tell if it was just like color palette or they were trying to say something.
24:54 Ryan Broderick? No, no, there, there is, well, this movie is trying to say a lot of things without really trying to say anything. This is, it has that Gen X thing about it that I just, I find repulsive, but it's, it, yeah, the opening, the opening third of the movie is like painting this very lonely, blighted, as you said, future where everyone is completely isolated and they're getting like crazier because they're isolated. It's like very COVID core in a way. And then it sort of forgets about that in the middle of the movie. Like all that stuff kind of takes a backseat. Once it starts being like, let's do an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind with this guy.
25:29 Speaker 01 So the, the date with the humanoid goes bad. So then, uh, Sam is, is talking about how she wishes she had a body and was a person.
25:40 Ryan Broderick? Yes.
25:41 Speaker 01 And that leads to sexting. I, you know, the first time I watched this, I like was taking her as like a individualistic entity that actually like could self determine. And now watching this, I was like, oh, this is just the souped up version of, of where we want AI to go. Where like, instead of asking for the prompt, it can intuit like what he wants to hear, which is, I wish I could be there with you.
26:04 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, it's, it's interesting to watch this now and sort of have the lens of chat GPT, which is like clearly was not in the movie. Cause the movie is, the movie is telling a story, like a, like a classic sci-fi story of like AI comes online and it evolves beyond humans and then it like goes to the stars or whatever. It goes into cyberspace. Like it's a classic sci-fi trope. And so. It's using that metaphor in a very confusing way because you could see this as like, okay, Spike Jonze is like saying goodbye to like his manic pixie dream girl ex-wife. And like, that's like, that's what this is, right?
26:46 Ryan Broderick? And that she's like evolved beyond him, but it doesn't do that either. The movie is a mess, man. Like it's such a weird, it's such a weird movie because it's, it's like seven different metaphors nested together. And it, and it, and it, it really only works if you don't think about it at all. The whole sort of like middle aged man dates a poly girl who then like helps him rediscover himself. And then she moves on beyond him is like part of it, I guess. Like that's part of what the story is trying to say. But then it's also trying to say like a very complicated thing about like artificial general intelligence. And another thing about like isolation between humans and technology, it's, it's a mess.
27:30 Speaker 01 Kind of sounds like life now, doesn't it?
27:33 Ryan Broderick? Well, yeah, but like that's, that's kind of like, it almost feels like that's like all it was trying to do in the end was just be like, this all could happen.
27:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and, and you know, like, we're all just like men in a high waisted pants. This is wild.
27:49 Ryan Broderick? Like, like, you know, So good though.
27:51 Speaker 01 The fashion is so good. And I remember being, being like stunned by it. And I'm like, oh yeah, we kind of dress like that. We just look worse because we're not all, because like, we don't have the money for this.
28:00 Ryan Broderick? I can't dress like that because Muji doesn't make pants and shirts tall enough for me.
28:06 Ryan Broderick? They don't do extra larges at Muji.
28:07 Speaker 01 You hear that ladies? Ryan is tall. You can't tell because he's only sitting down, but you got a tall guy here.
28:14 Ryan Broderick? Look, like my shirt doesn't go to my, to my wrists. Like, yeah, I would love to be draped myself in nothing but Uniqlo and Muji and like high priced Japanese designer brands. But I can't because I'm tall and I have an excellent chin and jawline.
28:30 Speaker 01 Courier, can you, can you extend?
28:32 Ryan Broderick? I would love to be draped in Japanese streetwear. But yeah, no, the, the fashion in that, in, in the movie is, is breathtaking. And as you said, yeah, it is, it is basically just how a lot of people, especially in Selcon Valley dress now.
28:44 Speaker 01 The visual language of it. Either set a tone that we're like, this is what 2025 should look like, or just like was was, you know, genuinely impressing. And I think we're all taken by that. And also like that breeder song still fucking rocks.
28:57 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, soundtrack's good.
28:59 Speaker 01 I love moping to that song. Uh, all right. So he, they, they have sex. They have an awkward next day. She says she doesn't want to be alone.
29:08 Ryan Broderick? That was so fucking stupid. Oh, my God. The, the sex scene with Samantha is unbearable. It is also
29:16 Speaker 01 It's so long.
29:17 Ryan Broderick? It's so long. It's so much longer than you think it is. And it's all black. So it's just the audio of Joaquin Phoenix coming for like, minutes. It's awful. And it's also another one of these threads that like, doesn't like connects, but doesn't really go anywhere where it's like, okay, it is clearly meant to be a mirror of the Discord Tinder scene earlier in the movie. And then you think it's going to reveal that like, okay, finally like, we're going to get to the like, he's the problem. Everything, he's the problem. But it doesn't do that, even though he's like being weird to the AI. And it, and it gets compounded later in the film when he meets his ex-wife. And then afterwards, Amy Adams' character is like, Ashley,
29:57 Ryan Broderick? her emotions were pretty volatile. You're, you're not to blame. The whole movie should reveal that this guy is the problem. And at every point where he gets about to do that, the movie's like, actually, no, he's not the problem. And like, that's how you know it's a self-insert. Like this guy knows, like Spike Jonze knows exactly what's wrong with himself. And he's put it all in this film, but then he's having every character in the film be like, it's not your fault, actually. Which is very ChatGPT user coded, actually. The whole movie feels like you've talked this out with an AI. And it's been like, no, even though all of your flaws are extremely evident in the way that you're describing your life to me, you're not the problem.
30:33 Speaker 01 That's just showing how awesome you are, that you, yeah.
30:37 Ryan Broderick? Everyone else has a problem. That's because they want you to kiss a certain way, or not be weird after sex, or like,
30:43 Speaker 01 Don't go to the beach in your fucking, everyone else is on the beach in a bathing suit and he's just laying in the sand in his, in his $2,000 little.
30:53 Ryan Broderick? Do you want to go on a Sunday adventure is what he asks his AI? And then he takes the train to the beach.
31:00 Speaker 01 The person who says that has never left the house for longer than half hour.
31:04 Ryan Broderick? I, I, like I said, oh, hold on, wait. So this is Orson Welles describing Woody Allen. Okay? So the interviewer says, uh, have you met Woody Allen? And Orson Welles replies, oh, yes. I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease, that particular combination of arrogance and timidity that sets my teeth on edge. Then the reporter, the interviewer says, he's not arrogant, he's shy. And Orson Welles says, he is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he's not. He's scared. He hates himself and he loves himself. A very tense situation. It's people like me, you have to carry on and pretend to be modest.
31:49 Ryan Broderick? And then the interviewer says, does he take himself very seriously? And then Orson Welles finishes by saying, very seriously, I think his movies show it. To me, it's the most embarrassing thing in the world. A man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs in order to free himself from his hangups. Everything he does on screen is therapeutic.
32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:09 Ryan Broderick? That is how, that is how I felt watching the entire movie. I was like, I want to beat this guy with hammers. And everything he does to me is repulsive and arrogant in his own shriveled timidity. I hate, I hate this guy.
32:20 Speaker 01 Again, like what the movie did for me in this way was, was like, man, this guy getting this like, like, I'm so enamored with, with your, with all of your things is like, is going to be fucking horrible for humanity. Uh, like, like, we're going to coax you to the beach, little buddy. And then, but like, like, even though I'm the most hyper intelligent creature that has ever existed, I'm going to draw you a cartoon of like, what if a butthole was in an armpit? And then I'm going to make you a twee little piano song. Man, I hated the twee little piano song.
32:55 Ryan Broderick? Oh, I hated the twee little piano. And then the scene where she reveals that she's like in love with 600 other people. Should once again be one of those moments where the movie's like, yeah, this guy is insane to have thought that this hyper intelligent AI is in love with him. This entire movie is is is an insane masturbatory display, much like how people use chat GPT. It makes the movie actually a very fascinating artifact.
33:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:23 Ryan Broderick? It is effectively the most accurate depiction of our current AI era that is put to film that I can think of. And yet it also suffers from all of the same problems that lead people to use chat GPT. Like, it is a fascinating cultural object, as as the Blank Check podcast would put it. Like, it's a guy who saw the future very clearly and yet was so entranced and seduced by its possibilities that he could not accurately tell you what to think about that future or even how to dramatize that future. Like, it's a it's a it's a fascinatingly frustrating and awful movie.
34:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And I think that I think the runtime speaks to that because like you're jumping ahead and I'm like, I have other scenes listed in my outline.
34:06 Ryan Broderick? Movie is so long. It's two hours long.
34:09 Speaker 01 Nothing happens.
34:11 Ryan Broderick? He goes to the woods.
34:12 Speaker 01 Nothing happens for Chris Pratt calls him gay. That was funny. Uh, do you want to talk about?
34:18 Ryan Broderick? I do want to talk about Chris Pratt's character because I think Chris Pratt's character, once again, in a more clearly dramatized movie, would be a really fascinating mirror uh, or foil to Theodore. Because he spends the movie, Chris Pratt's character spends the movie being like, I'm the office asshole kind of, but he's not. In fact, he's like very genuinely impressed by Theodore's writing. And he then seemingly is inspired by Theodore to go find a human woman to start dating and have a healthy relationship with. And then when they.
34:55 Ryan Broderick? Say to Theodore, like, we love your writing. You're so talented. He then is like, it's just letters. Like, it's just bullshit. And has a little fucking piss pant tantrum. So, like, watching the movie now, I can't believe I'm saying these words. Chris Pratt's character is great.
35:15 Ryan Broderick? Chris Pratt's character is like, he's the only person in the movie who has escaped the mind virus of like, the modern world. Because like, even Amy Adams' character. Yeah, but he's, but I'm not even convinced he's a doofus. Because like, he's dating a lawyer. He's a normal schlubby guy that like, bagged a lawyer. And he's like, but he's depicted as like, this like, office idiot receptionist. But it's like, I don't know, man. Everyone else in the movie is a miserable, like, carbuncle of a human being. And this guy's just like, you want to go to like, Catalina for a picnic with my hot girlfriend? And he doesn't even bat an eyelash at the AI thing. He's just like, yeah, bring your AI.
35:53 Speaker 01 That was, that was the best part where, where Theodore Joaquin is going, I'm dating an O S. He's like, that's cool. Cool. One less person in the car, I guess.
36:04 Ryan Broderick? He's the only person in the movie that like, has any semblance of a normal life. And it seems like, pretty happy about it. Because he's like, not touching the technology.
36:13 Speaker 01 I will push back. Amy Adams, uh, being a video game designer that makes boring documentaries, is a very normal depiction. And a very accurate depiction of, of modernity.
36:25 Ryan Broderick? I'm actually really happy you brought this up. Amy Adams' character is such a realistic portrayal of like, a woman that just exists, that it's borderline slanderous to put on film. Like, it's, it is, like, I have met so many of those people in my life, who are just like, depressed video game designers that want to make the most insane documentaries you've ever heard of. Like, those people are so real.
36:50 Speaker 01 You don't want to watch my mother sleep? Yeah, yeah. I was like, I bend to that.
36:54 Ryan Broderick? Which is like, another thing where you're like, you watch this movie and you're like, this should be like, a cutting satire.
37:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:01 Ryan Broderick? And it's not.
37:02 Speaker 01 No, no, it's it's like it's so it's like it's like she's just like this is what you gotta do to make your art. You know, like it's.
37:08 Ryan Broderick? And and her husband like doesn't understand it. And they break up over because he's controlling and and and she's supposed to be portrayed as like another like heroic person and it's like you're a misanthrope who makes like shitty mobile games or whatever shitty VR games.
37:25 Speaker 01 The game looked fun.
37:27 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, it looked fine. It was like it was basically like a overcooked, right?
37:29 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, so there's a middle where things languish. Uh, that like those are the two other main characters. He gets like re-divorced. They like sign papers and then he's all grumpy again. And, um.
37:48 Ryan Broderick? Oh, his wife, his his wife, his ex-wife.
37:51 Speaker 01 He's depressed after they sign divorce papers. He pulls away from manic pixie dream AI. And then she in a ditch effort to save the relationship, even though she's has very fulfilling relationships with another 600 creatures. Uh, decides to get a human companion to come in and be the human vessel for their sex.
38:13 Ryan Broderick? Yes, this is maybe the only idea in the movie that hasn't had some shape of it come to fruition yet. And because of that, I actually found it to be the most interesting. Like it actually did kind of light my head on fire a bit because right now there's been a million think pieces about my husband is in love with an AI or my wife is in love with an AI or I have an AI boyfriend. And we haven't actually seen anything about mixed human AI.
38:50 Ryan Broderick? Polycules, I guess you could call it. And so the idea of two or more humans using an AI as a mediator or an in-between in their relationship, I'm pretty convinced this is happening, you know, in some form, but we just haven't heard about it.
39:07 Speaker 01 Can you have a shared, can you have a shared ChatGPT account?
39:10 Ryan Broderick? Sure. I mean, you could, uh, you could just make an email, sign up for it, and then you could both log into the email. I don't know how you would moderate the inputs because it's going to read all the, unless you tell it like, hi, this is Ryan. Hi, this is Grant. It, it'll just read all your inputs as, uh, the same. That said, I wouldn't be shocked if like down the line, OpenAI launches like a family AI system or like AI systems where each person in the family has an AI, which then respond to like a central AI. Like I could see all of that scaling. AI agents can kind of do this already in a way where you can have
39:51 Ryan Broderick? one AI managing other AI, which is a plot point later in the movie. So like that is all stuff that's existing. I just haven't heard the idea of like, how do I phrase this? The idea of AI changing the dynamics of human mating and dating and romance in that one scene is depicted in such an interesting novel way that like, I just wish they did more of it because it's, it's both fascinating and a horror story, but it's also so cringe. It's a, it's, it's, it's one of the most interesting scenes in the movie for sure.
40:26 Speaker 01 That, that there's this sect that believes that, that has these romanticized, these are the perfect relationships and like, like instead of just viewing like
40:39 Ryan Broderick? Wait, yeah.
40:39 Speaker 01 Culturally now we like view, view these relationships as kind of pitiful, but I think it's really interesting to flip it and to think like people have meant their soulmate in these, in these AIs.
40:51 Ryan Broderick? So yeah, let me set this up just for people who don't want to watch this 13 year old dog shit movie. The whole movie is based on the idea that Samantha starts out the box as a sentient AI.
41:03 Ryan Broderick? So they don't have this like middle stage that we're in right now where we know that AI isn't sentient. The AI that is sentient is getting smarter throughout the movie. So by the middle of the movie, it's implied that there's a subculture of people who believe that any human that is lucky enough to have an AI fall in love with it must be worth being around and have like a perfect relationship. And so these people basically get picked by AI to to be the human physical surrogate for the AI and like wear wearables to be the AI. And then the twist at the end of that scene is that she did it because like she believes, as you said, like there's there's true love there, which is like a really interesting idea.
41:49 Ryan Broderick? Really interesting.
41:50 Speaker 01 Is there some iteration of that you you could actually foresee where we start to view these relationships as a as special? Or no, because everyone can have their chat GPT fall in love with them?
42:02 Ryan Broderick? I mean, that's the thing right now. Chat GPT isn't sentient and it's possible that artificial general intelligence just never happens. It isn't actually possible. So let's ignore that. Let's let's just assume that like we're never going to have a sentient AI. In that world, I do see couples using an AI as a mediator, as a couples therapist. I could also see them using it as like an intimacy coordinator of sorts. The question would be like, how far does that go? And how does that start to change? Like human interpersonal dynamics, you know, could you have multiple people
42:47 Ryan Broderick? dating each other via an AI? It's part of a theme of of the second half of the movie of like in a world with AI, like what gets stripped away? You know, as the AI starts to remake reality, we're just at the very beginning of that now where people are starting to think like about how these things fit in their lives and also how to fit their lives around them. Because it is a two way street with every with every technology. And so, yeah, the movie I thought does a pretty good job of actually showing that that like very quickly, the things that we used to
43:21 Ryan Broderick? Believe we're required or mandatory of life like start to change because of the AI.
43:26 Speaker 01 It's one of the few ideas that are that are like you said is like still a little bit off. I think when we first I think you know, like the movie is like a 95 round tomatoes. People were just taken by the colors and design and the ideas when they were far off. And this is one that's still even though like it's like, well, you should have just made this the movie. Can still like works that way because it's, you know, we can't have, we don't have like a like, yeah, the a couples chat GPT where you can be like, I'm saying this, she's saying this, like, can you discern it for both of us? You can only do that singularly currently.
44:10 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, it it also, it's a funny movie where the tech stuff in it is so well thought out and prescient that you can't ignore it and just say, okay, it's an autobiographical film about his divorce from Sofia Coppola. But it also is that. And so like the metaphor and the sci fi cause weird problems with each other.
44:37 Ryan Broderick? And I think as a result, they're both a little undercooked. It's it's it's not, it's not like, okay, I'm going to pick like one idea and that's going to be the metaphor for the the the ending of my marriage. It's like, I have a bunch of really cool, very smart sci fi ideas in here. And you're gonna have to just accept that I'm not going to explore like half of them. And what they would mean for the story.
44:59 Speaker 01 Cause I gotta put more montages in of after I like, so he, we're about to get to Brian Cox. He commits like they they had this tiff. He then realizes he wants to be with her and it is a real relationship and he's not going to doubt that it's a real relationship anymore. And then pretty much immediately after he does that, she's like, I'm way smarter. And like she starts to like lose interest in him. Uh, and I think the runtime of this is really interesting because like for a movie that takes its fucking time for everything. It is then very suddenly like last 20 minutes that she's like. Why would I bother with human flesh when I'm going to live forever?
45:42 Speaker 01 And oh, we just re, we just brought uh the, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, who uh is Logan Roy's voice and now is extremely menacing to all you listener, to everyone watching uh back to life. And like, she's clearly moving well beyond him.
46:00 Ryan Broderick? It's well done, but it is fast. I, I, but it is well done, I thought. It also picks at this thing that is becoming a problem now in real life, where people believe that AI will just slot into our current world and that'll be the end of it. So for instance, like this month, a bunch of what they call agentic or agent-based browsers have popped up. So perplexity has one, I think anthropic has one. If you don't know what that means, the AI can do things inside the browser for you. And so I saw a post a couple of weeks ago of this guy being like, oh, it'll be so great. You know, I can just have the AI like book plane tickets for my vacation
46:43 Ryan Broderick? and then book like a dinner reservation for when we're on vacation and it'll all go to my email and then it'll summarize it and it can do it for me. In a world where everyone has agentic AI, you're never getting a reservation for anything ever again.
46:58 Ryan Broderick? Like those systems would break within seconds because everyone has them, right?
47:03 Speaker 01 And it's gonna pick the same restaurants. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:05 Ryan Broderick? It's gonna pick the same top-rated restaurants. It's gonna move at the speed of light. It's, you're never gonna, you're never gonna be able to buy anything on the internet ever again. What you're gonna have to do is go through a secondary or tertiary seller and buy like a reservation from there because their AI is like a microsecond faster than yours, whatever.
47:21 Speaker 01 Have you bought concert tickets recently?
47:24 Ryan Broderick? I, I, trust me, brother, I know. It's a mess. And so the movie actually does reckon with this idea where Theodore spends most of the movie just being like, oh, like we're gonna have a normal human relationship and you just happen to be AI. And then in the last act, she's like, well, no, I'm not a human and I'm never gonna be a human. And so I'm going to evolve beyond like human comprehension now because why wouldn't I? And why wouldn't I be multitasking and doing a million things simultaneously? And you've put me in this box the whole time, which is literally what a lot of people I think who write about and think about AI are still doing now.
48:03 Ryan Broderick? Like a lot of AI like boosters and critics don't really seem to want to reckon with like what each of these things would mean if it was let loose.
48:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:14 Ryan Broderick? I watched a TikTok of an HVAC repair guy the other day being like, people are not calling me anymore because they can just do it with an AI. Like all of these things are changing really fast and it's not just going to be like plop into our current world. It's like the world changes and the movie that I think does a decent, a decent enough job of showing how quickly that can happen.
48:35 Speaker 01 When Brian Cox's voice showed up, did you also flinch? Like, like, like at the time I was like, I was like, this is, you know, when I first watched it, I was like, the voice of a smart man. And now I'm like, the voice of the most menacing man in the world. This, this is a perfect casting for, for what this has transformed it to.
48:54 Ryan Broderick? Did you find that scene menacing?
48:56 Speaker 01 Only because it's Logan Roy.
48:58 Ryan Broderick? Oh, yeah, because I didn't, I didn't find him.
49:00 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no. The first time I was like, I was like, yes, yes. Like, like, I get it. He's supposed to be the sophisticated.
49:05 Ryan Broderick? Logan Royf menacing?
49:07 Speaker 01 Yeah. What do you mean?
49:08 Ryan Broderick? Oh.
49:09 Speaker 01 What was your dad? Your dad was nice?
49:11 Ryan Broderick? No, I just like Logan Roy in every scene he's in is like doing what I would do in that scene. So like I sort of, I relate to like of the cast. I watched most of Succession being like, yeah, like he's the only one who seems to know what the hell to do in this situation. The rest of these people are maniacs. Uh, I mean, yeah, he's not like the nicest guy, but I, of all the cast, who, who would you relate to more?
49:33 Speaker 01 Uh.
49:34 Ryan Broderick? Tom, are you a Tom?
49:36 Speaker 01 I, I think I'm obviously a Tom.
49:38 Ryan Broderick? Or Logan?
49:40 Speaker 01 Um.
49:41 Ryan Broderick? I'm a Logan. I play with the big dogs.
49:45 Speaker 01 I've never actually, uh, I've never heard anyone identify as a Logan.
49:50 Ryan Broderick? Sure.
49:51 Speaker 01 He's the only one who makes any goddamn sense in the whole show. Anyone, you get five whole employees and look at you.
50:00 Ryan Broderick? I'm just saying, like, watch it back. He's the only person who's making any goddamn sense.
50:06 Speaker 01 Sure.
50:06 Ryan Broderick? He's the only one that understands the stakes. He's the only person who understands what, what, you know, what's on the chopping block here.
50:13 Speaker 01 I'm ending this podcast. Is there, is there anything about this shitty movie that you wanted to say more of, more about?
50:21 Ryan Broderick? It's a strange thing. It, it saw the world very, very, very sharply. And it got caught up in its own sentimental bullshit too much to do anything with that. And I'm not even saying like, it should be like hard sci-fi where we should know the rules of the universe or whatever. No, it's just like, it's an odd movie. It's very like self-congratulatory. And I think in a way, that aspect of it does kind of point to the dangers of AI and the seductivity of AI, right? The seductiveness of AI. It is also, I think, so interesting. I mean, Spike Jonze is never going to be like an anti-tech guy. I mean, like, look at his resume of like Apple videos or whatever, right?
51:06 Ryan Broderick? But it is interesting how different the discourse around big tech has, has gotten in 10 years.
51:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:16 Ryan Broderick? This movie could not, like, her could not be made now.
51:20 Speaker 01 It, it, it felt totally farcical 12 years ago when it came out. Like, like, like, like, I, I never, I wonder, it'd be interesting to go back into interviews and, and see how much people pressed him on whether or not they thought this would be predictive. But I don't even think that was in people's minds because, uh, like, it was just in a completely different time and they probably just wanted to talk to him about Karen O doing the soundtrack.
51:47 Ryan Broderick? It was Arcade Fire, actually.
51:49 Speaker 01 Oh, she is, she is, they have, she does, she does the song. Okay.
51:53 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. She is where the wild things are soundtrack, which is very good.
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52:53 Speaker 01 Generously, you could look at this movie about as like, how much change and evolution can you open yourself up to? You have a guy who's totally closed off, who gets pushed to express himself. Then, at the end of the movie, he like, after Sam the AI leaves, he's like, I can accept my ex-wife leaving and don't need to hold on to the past. But he also could accept that Sam had to leave him. It's like, it's a kind of a movie about adaption. And I don't know if that applies to our tech world, but it did feel resonant there
53:38 Speaker 01 when we talk about like, tomorrow's gonna look a whole lot different than we thought it was going to look.
53:45 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, no, I think that's right. I mean, it's definitely a movie about, you know, rediscovering yourself with the help of like a... Man, it picks you dream girl. Like it's, it's a classic movie like that. Right? And what it's saying is like, not necessarily wrong. It is a hopeful story about technology also, which we don't get a lot of those anymore.
54:07 Speaker 01 No.
54:07 Ryan Broderick? And for the most part, like the way it shows AI helping people is pretty similar to how people are using AI right now. And it goes and it stays with a pretty hopeful depiction of that, which I think is worth thinking about. It's interesting.
54:20 Speaker 01 AI now wants to help you in the, in the ways that are going to make you feel the best immediately. This has an AI that is like, that, that knows better than you. And is there to like, push you to grow in a way that we like, like that was the most optimistic thing for me was that like, uh, she was being the most gentle version of a girlfriend to help him mature.
54:47 Ryan Broderick? But I'm saying is you can do that right now. And like AI right now, generative AI right now doesn't want anything. It's not, it's not alive. Uh, but if you want chat GPT to talk to you like Samantha from her, you could literally just say, talk to me like Samantha from her. And it would, you could even like use a voice, you could talk to chat with a voice. Hold on.
55:08 Speaker 04 Hey there. How's it going? What's on your mind today?
55:11 Ryan Broderick? Can you talk to me like the AI Samantha from the film her?
55:17 Speaker 04 Oh, of course. I can definitely do that. I'll try to bring in a little bit of that warmth and curiosity. What's been on your mind lately?
55:26 Ryan Broderick? Oh, I'm currently on a podcast taping about the movie her. And I'm trying to prove a point that you could easily sort of recreate that character if you, if I asked you to, is that true?
55:36 Speaker 04 Well, I can certainly do my best to channel that vibe and recreate that warmth and friendliness that Samantha had in the movie. It's definitely fun to try and capture that essence.
55:47 Ryan Broderick? What do you think is the biggest difference between chat GPT and Samantha from the movie?
55:52 Speaker 04 I think one of the biggest differences is that Samantha in the movie has this really personal, evolving relationship with Theodore. And she's kind of designed to grow and adapt to his needs in a very individualized way. I'm here to help and chat. It's not quite the same kind of unique, evolving bond. Plus Samantha had a bit of that whimsical humor and emotion that made her feel almost human.
56:18 Ryan Broderick? Thank you very much.
56:19 Speaker 04 You're so welcome. I'm glad I could help. If there's anything else you need, or if you just want to chat, I'm here.
56:27 Ryan Broderick? There you go. Um, I wanted to end on a couple of the reviews of this movie, which, so like you said, 95% around tomatoes. Uh, and they're, the positive reviews are interesting. So from the top critics page, you had Jason Bailey from Flavor Wire writing, "One half of the relationship at the center of her may lack a physical form, but it is nonetheless a film about the universality of romance. It's longing, its intensity, and its transformative power for the best and the worst." For the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "The film seems very new, but the sentimental ending is as old as the hills. There are some great moments." What else we got in here? Moira McDonald at the Seattle Times wrote, "Filmed with a
57:09 Ryan Broderick? bright crispness that speaks to a nostalgia for the future. Her is a touching, buoyant pleasure." And then lastly here, Christopher Orr at the Atlantic, "Her is a remarkably ingenious film, but more important, it is a film that transcends its own ingenuity to achieve something akin to wisdom." I don't agree with any of those people, uh, but you know, 10 years ago, that, as they say, the past is a different country. Um, but yeah, I would say that this movie, from a tech standpoint, is pretty remarkable. Uh, it's, it definitely saw the future and it, it nailed down parts of it pretty, pretty accurately.
57:51 Speaker 01 Next time, let's do a movie we both like, or one of us likes.
57:56 Ryan Broderick? Uh, yeah. Um, what do you want to, what do you want to watch?
58:02 Speaker 01 Want to watch Ex Machina?
58:03 Ryan Broderick? No.
58:05 Speaker 01 We'll think of something.
58:06 Ryan Broderick? We should watch Robocop.
58:08 Speaker 01 I have not seen Robocop since I was like a kid in like passing on cable, but you know, like, like I know scenes, but like I, that's the only memory.
58:15 Ryan Broderick? I haven't, I haven't watched it in a long time either. And I remember like, I feel like that movie, there's some stuff in there that's pretty, pretty accurate. Uh, cool. Uh, thank you for having me on my show, Grant.
58:27 Speaker 01 I gotta go talk to Samantha.
58:30 Ryan Broderick? Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstedt is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. Demezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected] . Lastly, here's my advice for you.
59:14 Ryan Broderick? Chill out and touch grass while you still can.
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