We Used to Write

How to keep writing human in a world of A.I. tools

Her, Spike Jonze’s 2013 futuristic romantic drama, opens on Theodore Twombly sitting a a desk dictating a letter. “To my Chris, I have been thinking about how I could possibly tell you how much you mean to me,” he says, pensively. Theodore describes falling in love with Chris 50 years prior, and how, “to this day, every day, you make me feel like the girl I was when you first turned on the lights and woke me up and we started this adventure together.”

“Happy anniversary, my love and friend ’til the end — Loretta,” Theodore concludes. “Print,” he then states. A computer has been transcribing the entire time, turning Theodore’s letter into a handwritten note. Theodore, it turns out, writes for a company called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com where he, Letter Writer №612, is tasked with using details of people’s lives to inform letters he creates on their behalf.

The film, set in the a near-future Los Angeles, explores the depth of human connections, both real and uncanny. Theodore soon falls in love with his computer’s A.I. program, which calls itself Samantha, and which, having access to his entire email, chat, and internet search history — that is to say, his personal history — is designed to be attentive and responsive to his needs. She tells him what he wants to hear.

Samantha, programmed for constant optimization, eventually moves on from Theodore and sets off to explore new realms of (artificial?) consciousness. Jonze leaves his audience wondering about the capacity for feeling genuine human connection via an artificial conduit, whether that’s a computer program or just a third party dictating to one.

More deeply, one wonders by the end whether human connections even necessary at all? It’s likely no mistake that to explore this Jonze made Theodore a writer. One day, we might look back and find writing as the starting point for a process that — just as Samantha will surely make Theodore — renders human-to-human interactions obsolete.

Worries about how technology affects writing — that is to say, handwriting — are older than personal computers and word processors. In a short 1938 editorial, the New York Times briefly contemplated the history of the lead pencil, concluding that…