If you’re looking to watch a multi-billion year love story unfold over 92 minutes this January, “Love Me” is the movie for you.
Written and directed by married filmmaking duo Andy and Sam Zuchero, “Love Me” stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as two AI personas inhabiting a buoy and a satellite, respectively, who learn to fall in love while left alone on earth together following humanity’s demise. The film, which debuted at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, combines multiple forms of animation with live-action filmmaking to offer an optimistic look at what AI’s future could bring.
Speaking to IndieWire at Sundance, the two filmmakers explained that they saw the project as an opportunity to portray AI as a technology that could amplify humanity, rather than replace it.
“This ultimately isn’t about AI. It’s about us seeing through the lens of AI, of course,” Andy Zuchero said. “It gave us an opportunity as artists to look at who we are right now without all the baggage that we normally bring to it. We’re looking at the internet and humanity with innocent eyes. But as far as how we wanted to depict AI, obviously we agree that there need to be guardrails. However, we have a great hope for this next chapter of technology.”
Sam Zuchero added that certain conversations about AI’s potential to disrupt the entertainment industry miss the fact that the technology can be extremely beneficial in other spheres of human society.
“It cures illnesses, it helps us with efficiency … it’s also helping people who lose loved ones,” she said. “In entertainment, we often look at AI as an Other, something that will murder us, kill us. That’s a very standard approach to AI for entertainment, at least. It could be something where we could look at ourselves through it because it recreates it, it’s like a mirror for us. How we treat AI is how we treat others. If we want this thing we’ve created to be a benefit to us, then we should be looking at it in a positive light and treating it kindly.”
A Bleecker Street release, “Love Me” opens in select theaters on Friday, January 31. Watch the trailer below.
