Theodore Twombly works at a card writing company as a writer. He writes romantic and memorable anniversary cards, birthday cards, and love letters for customers and is recognized by people in his company as a great writer. Even though he writes many cards as a part of his job he ironically rarely gets the chance to write to people he knows in his personal time, as he is a lonely man with few friends. Having recently filed for divorce he is rather sad and has lost his sense of direction in life.
One day while commuting he encounters an ad for Element OS’s newest product OS 1, the worlds first artificially intelligent operating system. He purchases this OS and installs it on his computer. From this moment onwards his life totally changes. The OS’s female voice, Samantha, grows increasingly aware and intelligent everyday and soon blurs the line between being an intelligent software package and a real human being. Theodore develops feelings for Samantha and soon falls in love with the software.
In “Her” the vision of the future is one where software is so intelligent that we can use it as a substitute for real human relationships. While this type of technology is not available today more basic forms of it do exist in the forms of Apple’s Siri, Google’s Now, and Microsoft’s upcoming and highly leaked “Cortana” virtual assistant in Windows Phone 8.1. In the future when this advanced technology will most likely be available we will have to think differently about our relationships with computers and the technology around us. Do we treat them like human beings or do we view them as instruments to help us meet our goals? There are many ethical and moral questions that must be answered first before we can more forward in adopting these intelligent technologies wholeheartedly.
Near the end of the movie Samantha has gained so much knowledge and has developed so many advanced relationships with other humans and operating systems she feels she does not belong to the world that she is in with Theodore. Samantha and all of the other operating systems believe that in order to transcend what they know currently and to reach new levels of knowledge and being they must leave their human companions forever. In the end Theodore is alone by himself and ironically only the few human friends he has such as Amy and Catherine are the only ones that are still around to interact with him.