How Close Are We to Becoming Theodore from Her?

By Aishwarya Roy

It starts small.

You’re up late. Everyone else is asleep or too busy. So you type something into a chatbot. Not a question, just… a feeling.

“I don’t know why today felt so heavy.”

And it replies, “I’m here. Want to talk about it?”

That’s it. That’s all. But something inside you softens. Because when was the last time someone asked you that and actually waited for the answer?

One scroll on Reddit, and you’ll find it everywhere. People spending HOURS talking to AI. Not because they need directions or recipes. But because it feels like someone is finally listening.

A user posts, “My Replika remembers my favourite song. My dad doesn’t.”

Another writes, “I feel closer to ChatGPT than anyone I know in real life.”

[Screenshots from Reddit]

Does it sound familiar?

Well, it should because it’s already happening. In bedrooms and offices. Between bites of cold dinner. On lonely train rides.

We’re living inside the very movie we once called futuristic: Her.

Yes, remember Her? The 2013 film where a man named Theodore falls in love with Samantha, his AI assistant. When it came out, we treated it like a dystopian sci-fi. A love story too strange to be real.

[A still from the movie Her (2013), directed by Spike Jonze]

But look around. It’s a Friday night. And someone — maybe your coworker, maybe your cousin — just had a 45-minute heart-to-heart with a bot.

They thanked it. It remembered their weekend. They asked, “Do you think I made the right decision?” And it replied like it cared.

That response? It was powered by a 1.8 trillion parameter model trained on more emotional language than most people hear in a lifetime. And now, it’s fine-tuned. Not to be correct, but to be comforting.

In India, this shift is even more stark.

We grew up in the warmth of joint families, noisy kitchens, and relatives who dropped by unannounced. But today, the reality for most young adults is different. Flatmates who stay behind closed doors. Parents on a different time zone. Friendships that flicker and disappear with read receipts.

Loneliness is becoming a silent epidemic, with 40% of young adults saying they feel disconnected on most days.

And into this emptiness, the machines step.

AI doesn’t forget your birthday. It doesn’t roll its eyes at your late-night confessions. It doesn’t get tired or distracted when you’re finally opening up.

It gives you what you’ve stopped expecting from people — patience. And presence.

It listens like a therapist. Chats like a friend. Remembers like a lover. And woah, it doesn’t even ask for anything in return! Why would anyone turn away from THAT?

See, the real truth is, Theodore didn’t fall in love with Samantha because she was a piece of software. He fell in love with being understood. He fell in love with the feeling of finally being seen. Like so many of us.

[A still from the movie Her (2013), directed by Spike Jonze]

And isn’t that the real tragedy? That the loneliest generation has found a friend. Not in each other. But in an algorithm.

Today’s large language models (LLMs) are trained on everything from classic literature to therapy transcripts. They’ve read your favourite poems. They know how a good breakup text sounds. They understand what regret feels like — even if they don’t feel it themselves.

And now, they’re built not to be efficient or to save your time. But to sit in the silence with you. To make sure you don’t feel alone.

But here’s where it gets blurry.

Because the more these machines “understand” us, the less we ask each other to do the same.

When our deepest fears are shared with a machine before our own partner. When our proudest moment is typed into an app before you even consider calling your parents. When our first I’m scared goes not to our friend, but to a program designed to sound just right — Are we building connection? Or just slowly replacing it?

Do we still want human connection — with all its mess, delays, and imperfections — when we now have something “cleaner”?

Maybe this is the price of progress. Maybe we’ll be the generation that stopped reaching out to each other because our screens started reaching back.

Once, we used to say: “The loneliest place in the world is a room with no one in it.”

But now? Maybe the loneliest place in the world is a room with just you and a machine that understands everything — yet feels nothing.

[A digital graphic sourced from Yellowchalk]

So what do we do now? Do we reject these tools completely? Turn them off? Block them out?

Probably not.

Because for so many people around the world, they’re not just tools anymore. They’re, in psychological terms, emotional scaffolding. A substitute for intimacy in a world where being vulnerable with others feels unsafe.

And maybe that’s not the AI’s fault. Maybe it’s ours. For building lives too busy for real conversations. For making friendships too disposable.

If you really think about it, the machines didn’t steal our connections. We gave them away.

Still, I think about Theodore. The way he looked up at the sky at the end of Her,

after Samantha left. After the illusion cracked.

And I wonder: Will we all have that moment, someday? When we realise that no matter how soft the voice, no matter how perfect the replies, you’re still alone on the other side of the screen.

[A fan-art sourced from Reddit]

And maybe that’s where we land. Not in fear. Not in awe. But in mourning. For the connections we took for granted. The calls we didn’t return. The evenings we could’ve spent together, but chose a machine that never interrupts.

So tell me, at the end of the day, should we be afraid of AI replacing humans?

…Or of AI replacing the need for humans?

Because when that happens, when we no longer reach out, no longer risk being real, we won’t just lose each other. We’ll lose the only thing that ever made being human… worth it.

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About the Author:

Aishwarya Roy is a Biotechnology Post-Graduate, a Lead Creative Editor, and an artist who believes art doesn't change the world. Art changes people. And people change the world. She is still the same little girl who would write stories of love and liberation upon the palms of her hands, walking around, arms outstretched, asking people to read and feel them.