Director/Screenplay – Franklin Ritch, Producers – Aaron B. Koontz & Ashleigh Snead, Photography – Britt McTammany, Music – Alex Cuervo. Production Company – Paper Street Pictures/Last Resort Ideas.
Franklin Ritch (Gareth Acts 1&2), Sinda Nichols (Deena Helms), David Girard (Amos McCulloch), Tatum Matthews (Cherry), Lance Henriksen (Gareth Act 3)
Agents Deena and Amos bring Gareth in for questioning over his involvement on paedophile boards. Gareth agrees to tell them the truth – that he is actually an anonymous user that has been luring predators and sending their details to the agency. Their concern is for Cherry, the young girl he has been using as bait. Gareth reveals that Cherry is actually an artificial intelligence he has created to interact with the predators he catches. After he demonstrates Cherry to them, they agree to fund him in further development. Several years on, they come to the realisation that Cherry has grown and is demonstrating a level of intelligence and sophistication far beyond what they had anticipated. The big issue becomes what to do with Cherry as questions arise about whether she is a program or if she has any genuine wants and feelings of her own.
The Artifice Girl was a debut feature for Franklin Ritch who had previously made several short films. Here Ritch directs, writes and plays the lead character of the programmer Gareth. The film was a production from sometimes director Aaron B. Koontz – see Camera Obscura (2017), The Pale Door (2020) – who has been racking up some quite reasonable credits as a producer since the end of the 2010s under his Paper Street Pictures production company banner.
There has been a major upsurge of films about Androids and Artificial Intelligence since the early 2010s. These include efforts such as Her (2013), The Machine (2013), Automata (2014), Chappie (2015), Ex Machina (2015), Uncanny (2015), Morgan (2016), tv’s Westworld (2016-22), Tau (2018), Zoe (2018), Archive (2020), After Yang (2021), Finch (2021) and The Creator (2023), among others.
Franklin Ritch’s writing is exceptional. Your attention is immediately captivated from the opening section where Gareth is brought in by two agents who interrogate him where you get the impression he is a paedophile having his dirty internet secrets brought out into the open. This is abruptly reversed as he reveals that he has been trapping the predators and sending the information to them. Further revelations come as they press him about the girl he has been using in the video chats who he then reveals to be an artificially intelligent program he has created.
The Artifice Girl is a film written by someone you get the impression has had some real-time experience as a programmer, which differentiates it from almost all of the other abovelisted A.I. films. What is uncanny is watching The Artifice Girl after exploring ChatGPT – the film was clearly made before the evolution in generative A.I. programming that that wrought but the responses and some of the debates that go on are uncannily predictive.
The plot twists and turns with considerable ingenuity, But what is most impressive is the way in which the script explores the ethical issues – of programming vs feelings and simulated responses, the question of what it is that Cherry really wants, whether she has a purpose and self-awareness – with a stunning clarity. Most of the abovementioned films only tackle these in broad and frequently black-and-white issues, never in terms of complex ethical debates – you only need contrast The Artifice Girl with the other recent film it most resembles, the absurd M3gan (2022), to see at what different poles of the debate that the two operate. The third act becomes the conventionally plotted and the writing slightly less than the sharp brilliance of the earlier sections.
In addition, the film is conducted with an admirable economy. There are only three sets throughout, a different one for each act. In each scene there are only three people, plus the virtual presence of Cherry, and only Cherry and one person in the final act.
Trailer here