Sex and the AI: Queering intimacies

Using the lens of José Esteban Muñoz's queer utopian hermeneutic, this article examines the film Her and three computer applications that simulate intimate interaction between their users and AIs. Representations of human-AI intimate interaction suggest an erotics of technology, an increasing level of intimacy with machines. But such representations might also enact a queer utopian hermeneutic that looks beyond the here and now to imagine different kinds of intimacies. Ultimately, the authors pose questions about what underlying impulses and ideologies might shape how we imagine – and enact – our relationship to complex technologies.