My thoughts on Be Right Back

    In the movie, Be Right Back, our main character Martha loses her husband to a car crash after telling her he’d “be right back”. This is the catalyst for the events of the short-film, wherein she is signed up for a special program to help those who have also lost loved ones by allowing an AI to analyze their online personality and mimic it, giving them a chance to continue talking to their loved one through text. However, this isn’t enough to curb Martha’s grief, so she follows the program all the way through to the experimental level, which creates an android in Ash’s likeness. Here is my problem with this, it’s wrong. I think that we can all agree to some extent that creating an exact replica of your significant other is unsettling, but maybe you would say the texting, or even the phone conversations were fine. I believe that these sort of services are not.

    To start off, I do not agree with how Martha chose to grieve Ash’s death. I understand that she had just lost someone dearest to her, but I can’t say I agree with her actions. And just for the record I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone that close to you, but my position remains. I would also like to say this does not come from a morally superior type of thinking, I’m not attempting to elevate myself above a fictional character through moral high ground. I simply think it’s disrespectful, and I’d like to explain my reasoning for this position.

    It boils down to this, it’s an illusion. Just because an AI is perfectly mimicking your spouse’s thoughts, voice, and in the case of our protagonist, actions, it does not mean that you have them back. In fact, what you have essentially done is replace them. What is bad about this is that you haven’t moved on or accepted their death, you’ve created a clone to take their place. The android is not really them, it’s only an imitation. You may say that with sufficient technological progress, maybe a perfect copy could be made, and that’s true, it could be possible. However, that’s not how I mean imitation. What I mean is that the android or clone in question is not the original, only a remade version. There is a sentiment to the person you have tried to replicate which cannot be replicated. You would always know, in the back of your mind, that the replacement isn’t the original, real person. This same logic can be applied to their voice, and their words. Dispute it if you want, I believe you should leave the dead be, and focus on your life ahead.