Does Kimi deliver the goods? Thriller aims to capitalize on Alexa, Siri and Seattles tech cachet – GeekWire

Zo Kravitz portrays a Seattle tech worker in Kimi. (Warner Bros. Entertainment Photo / Claudette Barius)

Once again, Seattles tech scene provides the backdrop for a high-profile movie on HBO Max but this time, its serious.

Oscar-winning film director Steven Soderberghs tech-noir thriller, Kimi, echoes movies like Rear Window and The Conversation in a tale that also reflects the mind-wrenching isolation forced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the concerns raised by smart devices that are capable of tracking our every move.

Zo Kravitz portrays an employee at a Seattle tech startup that markets a smart speaker and AI voice assistant called Kimi. The startup is gearing up for an IPO that promises a big payoff, but as Kravitzs character works through a list of audio files that Kimi couldnt understand, she happens upon a snippet that suggests a crime was committed. Her efforts to get to the truth spark a classic spy chase with some extra tech twists.

Its a tale far darker than Superintelligence, the 2020 romantic comedy starring Melissa McCarthy as a Seattle techie and James Corden as an AI overlord.

Will Kimi stir up a debate over AI voice assistants? Does the movie accurately reflect the Seattle vibe? Will it generate as much buzz as Amazons Alexa, or will it flop as hard as the Fire Phone? The early indications are mixed: On the Rotten Tomatoes website, for example, the critical consensus is thumbs-up (90%) while the audience score is an emphatic thumbs-down (55%).

To get the verdict from ground zero, we turned to the experts who helped us sort out the fact, fiction and frivolousness in Superintelligence: Carissa Schoenick, director of program management and communication at Seattles Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence; and Kurt Schlosser, GeekWires go-to guy for coverage of Seattles tech culture.

Heres the slightly spoiler-y breakdown from Schoenick and Schlosser, with some extra spin provided by yours truly:

There are strong echoes of Amazons Alexa AI assistant and Apples Siri in the squat smart speaker that was designed specifically for Kimi. (Soderberghs ex-wife, Betsy Brantley, provides the placid feminine voice thats a prerequisite for smart speakers.)

Screenwriter David Koepp was reportedly inspired to write the script for Kimi by a murder case in Arkansas in which prosecutors sought access to audio files that may have been recorded by a suspects Amazon Echo device. That case was eventually dismissed due to lack of evidence, but its specifically invoked in the movie.

In some of the Seattle scenes, we see flashes of billboards touting Kimi 6.0, but Schoenick was surprised by how basic the speakers functions seemed to be. It was all extremely Home Smart Speaker 101, she said.

At the beginning of the movie, the CEO of the company that makes Kimi claims that his product is superior to Alexa and Siri because actual humans are employed to make sense of the audio that Kimi cant figure out. (This is the job that Kravitzs character has.)

Real-world AI companies would probably dispute the CEOs claim.

Ive heard reports of Amazon using content workers to look at misheard commands and help annotate those, to correct the system, Schoenick said. That is absolutely par for the course with AI. Having a human in the loop like that is the way you get annotated data to improve your models.

An ethical company would scrub the audio files to ensure the users anonymity. But because this is a movie, the company behind Kimi isnt bound by real-world rules. They had a nice, really slick little app for how to spy on their users, Schoenick said.

The same goes for the other intrusive surveillance methods shown in Kimi, including triangulating on cellphone signals and collecting retinal scans of employees without their informed consent.

Its a good example of how a tech company could have abused personal data rights by gathering data and hiding that language in their terms and conditions, because the point that nobody reads those is true, Schoenick said. That is where regulating the application of AI can be important.

In contrast to many other tech thrillers, the AI isnt the bad guy. Instead, the plot relies on old-fashioned human villains who arent always as smart as the devices they wield. Without getting too heavily into plot spoilers, Schoenick said the movies climactic confrontation strained plausibility.

No one was doing the thing that they would really do in real life in this situation, Schoenick said. Including the bad guys. They seemed very bad at their job.

One of the least plausible aspects of Kimi has to do with the idea that Kravitzs character could actually afford the apartment where most of the action takes place.

Shes a glorified content moderator, Schoenick said. This is a job that crowdsourced folks would be doing in the real world you know, people in content moderation farms. It wouldnt support the lifestyle of a single person in a huge loft apartment.

The Kimi-equipped apartment serves as a fortress for the audio interpreter, whose fear of public places arose after a traumatic experience and was reinforced by COVID-related social distancing. Its in a neighborhood that looks like Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square or Belltown in Seattle, but is actually in Los Angeles.

Schlosser agreed that the apartment seemed a bit too upscale for the typical Seattle techie, but he said Kravitzs blue-haired, hoodie-wearing character was in tune with the Pacific Northwest vibe.

She looked perfectly Seattle to me, he said. She had a young and fun, techie look about her, and her apartment was decorated with the requisite music posters and stuff like that.

There are plenty of exterior scenes showing off the Emerald City including views of Westlake Park, the Helix Pedestrian Bridge and the citys light-rail stations. Theres even a homeless protest that brought hundreds of extras to downtown Seattle during last years filming.

Seattle looks good in the movie. Maybe a little too good, Schlosser said. The way he sees it, a tech-noir thriller like Kimi could have taken better advantage of the Pacific Northwests trademark gloom.

The sunshine was a little offputting, he said.

But Schlosser said the mere fact that AI-centric movies like Superintelligence and Kimi are set in Seattle says something about the citys status as a tech capital.

I just think its cool in regard to the fact that now moviemakers are leapfrogging Silicon Valley and picturing Seattle as the setting for anything happening in tech whether its badly portrayed, weirdly portrayed, funny, exciting or beautiful to look at, he said. Seattle is on the moviemaking minds of these guys who are saying, Where is tech centered?'

AI2s Carissa Schoenick: The AI voice assistant Kimi takes a backseat to the psychology and action of the storyline. Kimi isnt invoked in any surprising ways that arent already possible with todays smart speakers instead, the tech is a plot device to motivate the agoraphobic main character to face her fears. The notion that humans would be employed to review and correct misheard voice commands is not unrealistic; in fact, human-annotated data is fundamental in developing and improving AI algorithms,and companies like Amazondo this very typeof voice command auditing for speech recognition technology. The movie has a slow start and reallyuneven character development with a bit of an eye-rolling conclusion, but if youre looking for something short and a little weird, its a pretty average watch. Grade: C for technology, and C-minus for watchability.

Geek Life guru Kurt Schlosser: Ive been living through COVID and forced isolation for two years. I didnt need a movie to trap me inside all of that for two more hours especially with a smart speaker as my only friend. I want to escape! When Kimi does get outside, its into a Seattle that is too sunny for a film that is so psychologically gloomy. Grade: C-minus.

Science geek Alan Boyle: Maybe Kimi doesnt quite measure up to Rear Window, but I think anyone whos a fan of that claustrophobic film genre (which also includes The Woman in the Window from last year and a newly released parody, The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window) will want to check this out. The same goes for folks who get into the issues raised by digital surveillance, or who just want to see if they recognize the Seattle scenery. Kimi is the first movie Ive seen that weaves the COVID-19 pandemic into its plot, and the first movie since Her to give a central role to an AI voice assistant. Grade: B.

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Does Kimi deliver the goods? Thriller aims to capitalize on Alexa, Siri and Seattles tech cachet - GeekWire