The Artifice Girl is a 2022note science fiction thriller.
Special agents discover a revolutionary computer program that uses a digital child to catch online predators. However, they soon learn that the AI's inevitable advancement is far more rapid and incalculable than they ever could have imagined, posing unforeseen challenges and unsettling consequences for the future of technology and mankind.
This film provides examples of:
- Actor Allusion: Lance Henriksen, who played Bishop in the Alien film franchise, gets the line "I'm not trading bishops" in the Chess game, and is also led to ask if there's any predator activity in Norway ("thankfully not" - Cherry): the actor's father James, who left the family when Lance was two years old, was from Norway.
- Artificial Intelligence: Cherry
- AI Is A Crap Shoot: Averted. Cherry remains a force of good throughout the three chapters and even becomes more human. Even after Gareth removes her primary objective, effectively freeing her, she voluntarily chooses to continue her work helping protect children but has plans to branch out and do other things.
- Batman Gambit: Amos starts beating up Gareth to get Cherry to admit she's more advanced than she appears. He later apologizes to Gareth for it.
- Big Good: All the main characters fulfill this role, but the biggest good of all is Maria Harbaugh,note who saved and inspired Gareth to create Cherry.
- Brutal Honesty: Gareth and Cherry. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree indeed.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Gareth and the girl that Cherry was modeled after, Maria Harbaugh. They were held by a child pornography ring along with several others and forced to... do things and sometimes watch.
- Decided by One Vote: The decision for a merger with a party that would materialize Chery is overruled by one vote. The vote turns out to be Amos.
- Destroy the Abusive Home: Averted. During a flashback, Gareth and Cherry visit the shack where he, Maria and the other children were held. He pours gasoline around but ultimately doesn't set the place on fire after seeing a drawing on a wall.
- Due to the Dead: Cherry keeps the urns of Dina, Amos and Gareth on her mantle in her home.
- Easter Egg: Gareth's security code is the ISBN number of The Metamorphosis.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When the authorities get close to busting the ring, child pornography ring starts to shoot the children. Maria shoves Gareth to the ground, saving his life as the cost of her own.
- Little Miss Bad Ass: Maria. She wasn't even ten years old and worked on escape plans to keep herself and Gareth sane. When they started shooting kids, she didn't hesitate to use herself as a Human Shield to save her friend.
- Older Than She Looks: 50 years later, Cherry now has a body of her own that looks like a teenage girl, but Cherry herself is over 50 years old.
- Pædo Hunt: Gareth's reason for creating Cherry.
- Time Skip: Act II jumps 15 years later after Act I. Act III takes place roughly 50 years after Cherry was created.
- Turn Off the Camera: Gareth requests that the security camera in the interrogation room be turned off before he explains what Cherry is.
- Wham Line:Cherry: I found her. I found her, Gareth. Maria Harbaugh.
