I remember when I first saw the movie Her in 2014. It does not seem like that was too long ago, but times are different now. Back then, I wondered if having a relationship with artificial intelligence would ever be possible. Nowadays with things like Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, and even Siri, it feels like that possibility will soon become a reality. The movie focuses around the main character, Theodore Twombly, and his purchase of a new intelligent operating system that is designed to help it’s user with just about everything that a computer can help with. The operating system has the option of being set to a male or female voice. Theodore chooses female. One would expect a typical automated, answering machine voice, however this voice is the actress Scarlett Johansson, who in the movie goes by the name Samantha.
Things progress in the movie, and it gets to the point where Theodore is officially in a relationship with Samantha. He communicates to her via an earpiece and a touchscreen handset that has front and rear-facing cameras. They go out on dates, and Theodore makes sure to have the camera out so Samantha can see everything. Samantha watches him sleep. They have sexual intercourse. They tell each other they love each other. Samantha receives and replies to Theodore’s emails at her own will.
Things are great up until Samantha brings up “fears” about not having a body. Samantha wants more than anything to be real for Theodore. Since Samantha is basically the internet personified, “she” is able to be anywhere on the web and is able to talk to anyone. Samantha goes so far as to have conversations with a “surrogate body”, a person who is willing sort of be a face to the name. Theodore becomes uncomfortable with this and it spans into an argument between them. Samantha audibly sighs during the argument, which prompts Theodore to ask why Samantha did that. He then goes on to tell her she is not human and she does not need oxygen, so why does she choose to talk the way she does.
It is at this point that I wonder: is he right? Is Samantha a human female or a computer simply because of a lack of a body? What does this say about me and how I perceive myself to be real? I think the conclusions I am coming to are that we cannot create human life any other way. At least we should not try to because it is too confusing. Perhaps we should limit how much our learning systems can learn and we should go back to limiting what they can do. An article from the psych report by Juliana Schroeder posits that it is Samantha’s voice: “A person’s voice is directly and often immediately linked with his or her thoughts and feelings in verbal language. Voice is a conduit through which complicated mental states are translated and communicated to others. In our research, we predicted that voice can be humanizing: that it conveys the presence of a humanlike mind through paralinguistic cues (i.e., the vocal cues that accompany language including loudness, rate, and pitch). In a series of laboratory experiments, we tested whether hearing a person’s speech makes him or her seem more “mindful,” that is, more thoughtful, emotional, and even more human, than reading a person’s speech (or writing).”
That is one way to look at it, but the voice comes from within the body. It is sound produced without artificial code. Can a voice exist without a body? I keep raising more questions for myself and going down more rabbit holes. I think there is more for us to explore as far as what our voices have to do with making us feel and understand our bodies. Sounds yields as much as society does.
Unruly Bodies 
This is so interesting! The power of sound and voice can be seen throughout history! In some religions different sounds/words are emphasized when meditating. Your question of ‘Can a voice exist without a body?’ is thought provoking! I think that technically no a voice can’t exist without a body. Even with AI a body created that voice so it cannot exist without a body.