The sci-fi romantic comedy ‘Her’, broke a new cinematic ceiling in the way we view our emotions and our dependence on others for companionship when it first released in 2013. The heartfelt conversations and the emotional and mental connection between the two protagonists — Theodore and Samantha — was special in every way. Except for a minor glitch. Samantha was not even a real person. She was a very advanced virtual assistant.

It was not the first time that we saw a virtual assistant on screen, but the kind of intimate companionship of human-machine depicted in this movie was unprecedented. It made the world take a hard look at the present and future of human and machine dependency.

Cut to 2020; we now have several apps, powered by AI and ML, who are normalising a superior intelligence ‘virtual companion’ which can not only help in our day-to-day activities but also play the role of a friend. Let us check out some of them.

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