CANNES, France – If a couple loses a child, is it ethical to use an AI to try to recreate the child if it will ease their grief? And what if that AI decides it has interests beyond the family it was trying to comfort?
These are the questions posed by Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda. His Cannes Film Festival entry, Sheep in the Box, imagines a near-future where technology provides ways to comfort people.
The 2018 festival’s top prize winner said the film was inspired by an encounter with a Chinese entrepreneur who was developing an AI system that could simulate the dead.
“The resurrected dead continued to converse, not only reliving the past, but also building new relationships and accumulating common experiences,” Kore-eda said at a press conference on Sunday.
“I felt there was always someone who would want to take advantage of a service like this,” said the director, known for quiet family dramas such as “Shoplifters of the World” and “And I Became a Father.”
This prospect, he said, also led to ethical questions: “Can the living really be allowed to manipulate the existence of the dead to their will?”
The film follows a grieving couple, Otone and Kensuke Komoto, played by Haruka Ayase and Daigo Yamamoto, respectively, as they deal with their sense of loss by relying on a humanoid child created from their deceased son’s data and memories.
Although he is hesitant at first, the father takes a liking to the life-like robot and integrates it into the couple’s life. But then he befriends another humanoid, putting the couple at risk of being abandoned again.
Critics are generally unconvinced. The Hollywood Reporter, alluding to the film’s cryptic title, called it “thematically thorough,” while industry magazine IndieWire called it “emotionally stunted.”
“Sheep in the Box” is one of 22 films vying for the festival’s top prize, which will be awarded on May 23.
