AI and Posthuman Romance in Literature and Film

Abstract

From Pygmalion’s Galatea in Greek mythology to Joi in Blade Runner 2049, literary and cinematic writers explored the possibility of men’s heteronormative romantic relationships with women created by art and technology. In recent decades, with artificial intelligence growing even more powerful, writers can even imagine digital, virtual, or robotic beings capable of becoming heterosexual men’s ideal romantic partners, who may even be capable of reproduction. This paper examines the representation of digital, virtual and robotic female companions depicted in literature and film: “Helen O’Loy” (1938), HER (2014), Ex-Machina (2015), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). While this history of creative imagination mirrors the male-dominant culture of Silicon Valley and even suggests an implicit desire to return to the old misogynistic gender politics, the reception of these works points to an interesting cultural, psychological, and literary insight into the changing paradigms or “algorithms” of romantic love and gender relations in our posthuman era. Sooner or later, “digisexuality” may become one of the widely recognized sexual identities.