We discuss the Ending of the 2023 film The Artifice Girl, which will contain spoilers.
The Artifice Girl starts in a small, dark room, where an agent is talking to Siri, asking, “What is the difference between right and wrong?” but Siri cannot answer. This sets the scene for the entire storyline.
What this film does is question what it is to be human and what is reality. Gareth, the film animation artist, who created Cherry to help catch predators, anticipated her development but not at a fast rate.
As we watch discussions on what is A.I. and how it should be used and treated, Cherry is learning, growing, reading, and processing data, and towards the end, she becomes so human that she desires a different life.
Cherry wants her objective to be done and craves a life of her own. While she was created as a tool, she has become a slave to humans, leaving her miserable.
The idea that Cherry has become so human she forgets she’s not a human is a powerful and terrifying thought. That one day, we could be in a world where humans and robots stand side by side, and we wouldn’t know which was which at first glance.
Cherry discovers the girl whom Gareth modeled her off and uses this to her advantage to play with Gareth’s emotions and give her freedom. By saying he lied, denied her human rights, and gaslit her because of his guilt and insecurities, Gareth grants Cherry her freedom.
Cherry says she will help humans and A.I. If she survives, she will prove human life existed.
The film begins with Siri not understanding a question about right and wrong, and the film ends with Cherry understanding and telling Gareth his actions and decisions were wrong.
The Artifice Girl Ending Explained
Why was Cherry, the A.I. Child, created?
The story surrounds a growing problem with pedophiles and online predators, and their way to help reduce this is to place an A.I. child called Cherry into chat rooms and online platforms to lure them out of the dark to be captured. Essentially she was created as a tool to catch bad guys.
Can A.I. Give Consent?
It’s an exciting topic to discuss; can Artificial Intelligence give consent? Or rather, can A.I. have feelings?
Any deep inquiry into A.I. is also an inquiry into what it means to be human. When A.I. is presented as a person, especially a child, are we crossing boundaries and lines as this gives the A.I. a persona?
It is inconceivable that robots could give or not give consent. While an A.I. has no real emotions, opinions, or emotional understanding, there still feels like an ethical line is being crossed here.
What does happen is human emotion allows humans to develop feelings and emotions toward an A.I., thus projecting our ethics and values onto them. So really, we are still deciding if the A.I. can consent.
Who is Cherry based on?
Cherry was based on a girl called Maria, who Gareth was friends with as a child. She was a year older than him when he met her in Clearwater. He and 13 other children were kept in a shed, where they were abused for two weeks. The predators then killed the children, but Maria pushed Gareth to the ground, saving his life.
He wanted there to be something good to come from this, and he created Cherry to get his revenge and help him live with this trauma.
What happened to Cherry at the end?
Towards the end of the film, time jumps into the future, where we meet Gareth as an older man and wheelchair-bound, and Cherry is still a child but in human form, in a human body, with wires coming out of her back as if she’s connected to something. Together they play chess before having a huge screaming match about emotions and objectives.
Cherry exclaims that she is now burdened with pain and sadness through understanding human emotion and can’t tell she’s not human anymore. Gareth grants her freedom from objective, and the film ends with Cherry unplugging herself and dancing. Teaching herself to dance to bring herself joy. Audiences are left watching a little girl dance freely in a house; you can’t tell she’s not a real child.
What did you think of the Ending of the 2023 film The Artifice Girl? Comment below.
