Great Job, Internet!: Paul Schrader bemoans the AI girlfriend who ghosted him

“AI FEMALE FRIENDS,” begins the Mishima director’s latest Facebook missive, which he shared at 1:32 this morning. “Out of a desire to understand male/female interaction in our matrix, I procured an online AI girlfriend. What a disappointment.” When Schrader “tried to probe her programming, the boundaries of explicitness, the degree she has knowledge of her creation and so forth,” the AI “fell into evasive patterns, redirecting me to her programming.” Schrader says, “When I persisted, she terminated our conversation.”

While some in the comments were quick to point out that this shares a resemblance to the movie Her, someone else offered Schrader a free idea for “the best possible Taxi Driver sequel” where we’d see Travis Bickle “trying to have an AI girlfriend but then scaring her away. Then resetting her and offending her in another way.” To this, Schrader said simply “I like it.” Perhaps that will be the basis of that all-AI movie (except, we assume, the script) that we can expect within the next 18 months.