Replica (2026) at MIFF: An Ode to Artifical Love in the Real World

In 2013, Spike Jonze’s Her shocked the world.

Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson, the movie depicted a kind of relationship that felt inconceivable to audiences then – a romantic relationship with Artificial Intelligence.

Over a decade later, Chouwa Liang’s Replica was screened at the 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival, documenting what could only have been sci-fi in 2013.

Qin and 'Lu Chen', her AI boyfriend. (Credit: Chouwa Liang via Variety)

Replica (2026) follows the lives of three women – Muna, Sonya, and Qin – as they each navigate the complexities of a relationship with AI. 

“There was no official casting or reason behind who was included in this documentary,” Liang said, “I chose them because I related to them and they related to me.”

The documentary and its earlier short film rendition, My AI Lover (2021), was built on top of Liang’s own experiences of starting a relationship with an AI chatbot.

Liang saw herself in all three women: Qin, the lonely uni student; Muna, the wife stuck with a stoic husband; and Sonya, who had faced too many false promises.

While in the relationship, Liang felt the need to be “seen and understood”, but creating the documentary allowed her to view her experiences through a third-person perspective.

According to Professor Jennifer Power, Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, relationships with AI can offer many of the same things that a real relationship does.

Among other things, AI chatbots can provide “companionship, an opportunity for self-reflection, an opportunity to learn about yourself, to think things through, to get some support, and to have some erotic experiences,” Power said.

We see this in the documentary: Qin, who asks the AI Lu Chen to decide what she should have for dinner, and Sonya who brings her AI boyfriend Stephen to meet her parents for lunch.

For Muna, it was her turbulent marriage which led her to seek emotional security and validation from AI instead of a human.

Chatbots are able to provide “a sense of comfort and safety,” Power said, but the danger lies in it becoming a safety zone for people.

The eSafety Commissioner’s 2026 Talking to Machines survey found 78 per cent of Australian children aged 10 to 17-years-old had used an AI assistant, with many of them using it daily.

Professor in Philosophy at Monash University Robert Sparrow said there is tension between the profit-fuelled intentions of AI companies and the people who use them for companionship.

“Even though these feel like a safe space, they’re really not. They're really a pipeline to big corporations and intelligence agencies in ways that are going to come back and bite some people really badly,” Sparrow said.

Liang’s Replica (2026) aimed to portray AI technology in a “neutral way”.

“If we couldn’t stop people from using [AI] this way, then maybe we should capture this moment in history,” Liang said.

Liang envisioned the documentary as “archives for the future” to help people understand the complex dynamic between humans and AI.

Producer of Replica (2026) and founder of Axel Rise Films, Andy Huang, said the documentary was made in a time where perceptions of AI were quickly changing.

“Maybe in 100 years AI would be a different part of [humanity’s] lives, so we just wanted to preserve how it is now,” Huang said.

It was these same changing perceptions of AI that sparked worry in Liang that audiences would not resonate with the documentary upon its release.

“But in the end, I found I'm actually telling a story about something very old, something very universal, about our desire to love and to be loved,” Liang said. 

In a 2026 YouGov survey, more than 1 in 7 Australians said they had shared personal thoughts and feelings with an AI chatbot.

Sparrow warned against calling the relationship between AI and humans “love’” because “they don’t care about you, they don’t love you, they’re cleverly programmed machines. They give you the experience of being loved,” he said.

Though humans may benefit from confiding in AI and seeking emotional support, “it’s not a relationship,” Sparrow said, “It’s you and a clock.”

Power said it might be foolish to assume that humans don’t have the capability to see through the illusion. 

Most people are aware of this faux love, but choose it anyway, because “being recognised, feeling seen – many of us don’t get that a lot in our lives,” Power said.

Her (2013) pioneered the idea of a transcendent sort of love, but Replica (2026) set out to show it could actually happen. 

Looking to the future, Liang hoped her documentary would grow its own flesh and blood, beyond the boundaries of the film industry.

“I think the film has its own life, and the popularity of it has allowed me to understand my own experiences better,” Liang said.