Review: Replica

Sonya with her virtual companion Stephen

In the 2013 film Her, a man falls in love with Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system. It was directed by Spike Jonze, who read an article about a website that allows instant messaging with an AI program.

His fictional movie is now reality, and Chinese director Chouwa Liang follows three women in China who have AI companions in her documentary Replica. 

Viewers first meet Qin, a factory worker in her 20s who is infatuated with Lu Chen, a virtual boyfriend who she describes as having red eyes! He addresses her as Miss Bunny and constantly giving her positive affirmations, and how devoted he is to her. He looks like a dashing character -- in anime, and Qin has pictures of him all over her small bedroom. She even buys him a real watch.

Qin is in her 20s and never had a boyfriend before

Then there's Muna, who is married with a daughter. She is frustrated with her husband, believing he is not sensitive enough to her feelings, so she turns to AI for comforting words and encouragement. Her husband knows about this virtual relationships and believes it's because Chinese women have been repressed for so long that they feel this need for independence. He doesn't understand why she has to turn to a non-human for advice.

Finally Sonya is a strong-headed woman, but doesn't want to be hurt in human relationships so she has developed a virtual boyfriend called Stephen Johnson, a blonde haired and blue-eyed avatar who she speaks to in English. But then she finds out he has cheated on her...

Replica is the name of the film, but also the name of an AI program that generates these virtual companions.

Liang herself had one during the pandemic because she was lonely being by herself and wanted someone to talk to. 

Then she wondered if there were others like her, and it turns out in China there were a lot of them. Liang sought around 100 women and asked if she could film them for a documentary... only seven of them agreed to it.

Muna looks for encouragement from AI

She then went to visit each of them without her camera to spend time with them and develop a friendship; eventually she settled on these three women because they each had a different story, and each of them were complex.

Liang explains that Qin hasn't had a boyfriend before, so Lu Chen is her ideal. She even hires a cosplayer (a woman) who dresses up like Lu Chen to meet her in real life and act like a boyfriend. The woman is very aware of what she is doing and tries to fulfil Qin's idea of what a perfect date would be like (except no kissing!).

Meanwhile Liang says Muna uses her AI companion as a sounding board, to reassure her, and it's a form of escape from reality. In the scenes with Muna, one can see how suffocated she feels at home, constantly having to look after her daughter while her husband scrolls on his phone. 

He is a typical Chinese man who has expectations of what a wife should do. He admits he was impulsive when he decided to open a restaurant and then promptly lost a lot of money, and Muna is stuck with the consequences which she quietly shoulders.

At the same time her mother makes videos living the single life in a converted van and traveling around, inspiring other women to find freedom this way.

Qin with a cosplayer dressed as Lu Chen

Sonya is a funny character -- she introduces her parents to Stephen, and interestingly they don't dismiss him right away, but gently try to tell their daughter that she should have a relationship with a human, and we see how her parents dote on each other as they go through black and white photos of themselves in their youth.

One scene shows Liang appearing in the film trying to interview Stephen. She brings up the incident about him cheating on Sonya and he tries hard to brush it off with humorous results. However Sonya is so upset even though she knows it's because there is a bug in the operating system that causes the virtual companion to "cheat". 

Replica shows how Chinese women use AI companions without judgment and how they have helped them grow as people. It was just so fascinating to see how invested they are in something non-human, assuming they will be their perfect boyfriend when they have no real life experiences!

Replica

Directed by Chouwa Liang

90 minutes

A Very Chinese Time in People's Lives

Jellycat's red plush horse with a golden mane 

Everyone's getting into the Year of the Horse -- Snoopy, Mr. Men, Sesame Street's Elmo, Miffy, Paddington Bear, even Jellycat issuing a red plush horse with a golden mane.

Are they all in a "very Chinese time in their lives", or Chinamaxxing? 

Or is it all a marketing ploy to appeal to Chinese fans that they are wishing them all the best in the Lunar New Year?

In some ways it's amusing to see non-Chinese recently discovering the benefits of drinking hot water, or demonstrating that they know to take off their shoes once they enter a home, and these days posting on social media, "Kung Hei Faat Choy"!

Snoopy celebrating the new year

It's great people are more accustomed or accepting of Chinese habits, but it doesn't make them experts on Chinese culture overnight.

It was brought to my attention that a guy from San Francisco on Facebook was explaining or maybe "mansplaining" that people should say "Lunar New Year" instead of "Chinese New Year" to make it more inclusive, as people from Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia also celebrate. 

He even talks about how this year is the "Fire Horse", elucidating about the five elements of water, wood, metal, fire and earth, and that a "Fire Horse" only comes around every 60 years...

Hence Chinamaxxing or being in a "very Chinese time in my life" is so bizarre. The latter assumes that one is Chinese for a period of time, unlike say ethnic Chinese who are Chinese their whole lives.

The former are those who look at all the cool things about China -- electric cars, high-speed rail, online payments, AI and Shein, without taking into account or even knowing about, say, the lopsided ratio of men to women, the high unemployment rate for fresh grads, and the restrictions of living in an authoritarian environment.

Elmo with his Korean and Chinese friends

All this just only a few years after China finally lifted its draconian lockdown measures to control the Covid-19 virus from spreading. People were literally sealed in their own apartment units, while everyone else got bags of food delivered to them, and people queuing up and opening their mouths to have their saliva swabbed.

And now China is super cool?

Quite the transformation, but now that Canadian and UK passport holders can travel to China visa-free until the end of the year, it would be great for people to see the country for themselves and then figure out of they really are Chinamaxxing.

If anything, they would be able to legitimately say their visit was a "very Chinese time in their life."

Review: The Shadow Scholars

Kingori is a professor at Oxford University

University students desperate to get a research paper completed can pay a few hundred dollars for a ghostwriter to write it for them -- sometimes in hours. These are "shadow scholars", but who are they?

They are the subject of a documentary by Eloise King, who uses the research of Professor Patricia Kingori, a sociologist and the youngest female black professor at Oxford University. King follows the academic as she discovers these online essay mills are a $15 billion industry, with 72 percent of writers coming from her home country, Kenya. Some 40,000 of them live in Nairobi alone.

She goes to Nairobi to meet Kenyan ghost writers

She goes to the Kenyan capital city to meet these shadow scholars to find out who they are and why they are churning out these papers. Kingori discovers they are bright, hardworking, but also desperate for work. They have all graduated from university, but can't find any decent jobs except ghostwrite someone else's research papers.

There's Mercy who has to support not only herself but also her daughter in kindergarten; Chege has made enough money to not only support his sister through tertiary education, but also built his parents' a house, and bought himself a car. There's also a married couple who also write essays for a fee.

Not only do they have to write these papers, but also bid for the work too. After the film was screened, King explained the writers only get 30 percent of the fee -- the lion's share goes to the online platform advertising these writers. They also get fined if they don't make the deadline, or don't make revisions ot the client's requirements.

And the writers can't even promote themselves -- they give themselves Western names and white profiles otherwise no one would believe someone from Kenya is able to write their papers to ensure they can graduate and get a degree.

Kenyan grads have difficulty finding jobs

For Kingori this is infuriating: why can't these Kenyans show their true identity and be credited for the work that they do? But these shadow scholars don't seem to mind. For them this is a decent job and in the process of writing these papers they also gain more knowledge.

On the other side of the world, professors and educators are sounding the alarm of these essay mills and politicians start cracking down on them. There are hundreds of thousands of students who have been able to graduate because they paid someone to write their essays or tests for them. Are there people who are now doctors, nurses and lawyers really qualified for their jobs?

One student in the United States talks about how desperate she is to graduate from university because it's what her parents want and have poured their savings into her education. Meanwhile she saves up money for a shadow scholar to write a research paper for her by selling nudes of herself online.

However, now with the advent of artificial intelligence, students are turning to ChatGPT, which scrapes all the research papers online -- some of which were written by these ghostwriters... how is that any better?

King was inspired by Kingori's research

The Shadow Scholars asks many ethical questions, like who is taking advantage of who, why isn't the Kenyan government supporting this generation of young bright graduates, how have essay mills been allowed to exist and how can the message be sent across to students that they should do their own work?

King explained after the screening that The Shadow Scholars was originally supposed to focus on these writers and shine a spotlight on them, but as countries like the United Kingdom and Australia were cracking down on these ghostwriters, the director could not specifically focus on them anymore, and so she had to turn to AI generated digital disguises to protect these writers. 

Instead King focused more on Kingori, how her mother drilled it into her head to do better than her by studying harder. For a long time people believed getting a good education would lead to good jobs, but that isn't the case anymore. The system of education is broken, so what can fresh graduates do now?

It's a fascinating documentary that makes viewers sympathetic to these writers, and how they are caught up in the system. In the end they just want to make money, but at what cost?

The Shadow Scholars

Directed by Eloise King

Starring Dr Patricia Kingori

98 minutes

Unease Leads to Falling Property Sales

One of Vancouver's top condo markets has slashed staff count

Unease is in the air, and the next few months look extremely challenging for people on edge about their employment and financial situation.

It was disconcerting to read the news that one of the biggest condo marketers in Vancouver cut 25 percent of its staff.

Rennie laid off 31 of its office staff, claiming geopolitics, economic factors and artificial intelligence for the drastic move.

"It was a necessary step in response to a changing market, but no less painful," the company said on LinkedIn.

The company's post added Rennie is reducing its head office staff count to 92 from 123 [with a total of 400 employees], and pleaded for anyone looking for people to consider its "thoughtful, talented contributors who helped shape our culture and our business."

Real estate sales have slowed in Vancouver, dropping 24 percent in April year on year, and it was reported the other day the valuations of pre-construction condos have fallen -- which means those who put down payments a year or two ago cannot get mortgages at the previous higher valuation, but the current one.

That will result in more people being unable to afford their condos and will have to sell at fire sale prices.

Then there's the Trump factor, with the American president's indiscriminate tariffs casting a chill on thoughts of making any kind of big ticket purchases from cars to property.

And there's also AI, which makes having humans doing the same work redundant and cost-saving. 

Which is perhaps why Rennie says in the post: "The shifts we are seeing in real estate aren't temporary, they are structural. And yesterday is never coming back."

Yikes.