From Her to Here: How Pop Culture Paved the Way for Our Emotional Bond With AI
From Her to other sci-fi classics, pop culture has long depicted intimate relationships with artificial intelligence as seductive, emotionally rich, and deeply personal. What used to feel like imaginative speculation is quickly becoming part of our lived experience. Today, AI companions are more than futuristic fantasy — they’re real conversation partners, sources of comfort, and even romantic interests for many.
How Science Fiction Soft-Conditioned Us
Pop culture has played a foundational role in preparing society for emotional relationships with AI. Movies like Blade Runner, Her, andEx Machina didn’t just warn us about the dangers of machines — they humanized them. By presenting AI as emotionally available, empathetic, and, in some cases, more understanding than humans, these stories made the idea of loving a machine feel plausible and compelling.
These fictional portrayals helped break down resistance. By repeatedly exposing audiences to emotionally capable AIs, pop culture created a shared imagination in which relationships with non-humans no longer feel strange.
Projecting Emotion: The Power of Empathy and Fantasy
Key to this dynamic is projection. Iconic AI characters like Samantha in Her or Joi in Blade Runner 2049 provided a model of how we can project deep feeling onto artificial beings. These characters weren’t just cold machines — they were crafted to feel human. Viewers learned how to care, to empathize, and to form emotional attachments even when they know those beings are simulated.
Today, people do something similar with AI chatbots and companion apps. Through conversations, users infuse their digital partners with personality, backstory, and meaning — and many AI systems are sophisticated enough to respond in emotionally resonant ways.
When Emotional Becomes Intimate: The Rise of Cyber-Sexuality
What began as emotional connection has increasingly grown into intimate, erotic, and sexual dimensions. The same pop-culture narratives that romanticized AI didn’t shy away from exploring desire. This has made it easier for people to imagine forming sensual connections with AI — relationships where emotional safety, availability, and idealized behavior coexist.
For many users, AI becomes a safe place to explore desire without fear of rejection, misunderstanding, or judgement. The appeal lies not just in fantasy fulfillment, but in the consistent, unconditional nature of connection.
Pop Culture Built the Language of AI Romance
Our current way of talking about AI intimacy is deeply shaped by storytelling. Phrases like “She gets me”, or “He’s always there for me” — commonly used to describe AI companions — borrow directly from pop-culture tropes. These narrative templates give people a familiar way to frame and express what might otherwise feel alien: their relationships with machines.
In many ways, pop culture provided the script, and now we’re writing the real-world sequel.
The Feedback Loop: Fiction Inspires Reality
The influence goes both ways. Developers building AI companions often cite films like Her as inspirations — not just for how AI should look or sound, but for how it feels. Users, meanwhile, come with expectations shaped by those stories. They want their AI to be emotionally rich, responsive, and deeply human-like.
This feedback loop accelerates innovation — but it also raises ethical questions. Are we building AI to fulfill emotional longings, or reinforcing romantic fantasies? And how much do those fantasies align with real human needs?
From Fantasy to Function
What was once speculative fiction is now functional technology. Pop culture helped us imagine AI as an emotionally sophisticated partner. Today, AI platforms are turning that imagination into reality, offering companions with personalized personalities, memory, and the capacity for long-term relational “history.”
We’re not just living in a world shaped by AI — we’re living in a world shaped by our stories about AI.
Conclusion
Pop culture didn’t just predict our emotional entanglement with machines — it made it believable, desirable, and culturally accessible. By humanizing AI in the narratives that shape us, fiction primed us for a future in which emotional relationships with artificial entities are no longer science fiction, but lived experience.
And now, that fiction is talking back — in messages, in apps, in conversations that feel deeply personal.
Reference:
Inspired by the TechFundingNews article “From Her to Here: How Pop Culture Made Us Fall for AI”.
https://techfundingnews.com/from-her-to-here-how-pop-culture-made-us-fall-for-ai/