While the relationship between a man and his operating system might have seemed like a step too far for some, the rest of us took a healthy leap of faith and fell a bit in love with Spike Jonze's Oscar-nominated romance Her.
And while the excellent performances of both Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson helped to make it believable, a leading artificial intelligence pioneer has spoken up to say that the central idea might be possible in years to come.
Ray Kurzweil, a futurist who wrote the book The Age of Spiritual Machines and was the subject of the documentary Transcendent Man, has praised the film's vision of the future, claiming it does a better job of presenting artificial intelligence than most of its predecessors, including A.I.
"This is a breakthrough concept in cinematic futurism in the way that The Matrix presented a realistic vision that virtual reality will ultimately be as real as, well, real reality," he wrote in a review posted on his site.
His only problem is the timing. According to Kurzweil, we can expect these developments at a much later stage. Elements such as the pin-sized camera that can be placed on a face and the video game character Phoenix interacts with can be placed at around 2020. While Johansson's character is more like 2029, although he believes that she will have a body, rather than just a voice.
If you'd like to read more of Kurzweil's thoughts on the film then click here.
(Images: All Star)
