Movie review
April 27, 2023 · 93 min · NR
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
A programmer creates an AI program using a virtual child persona to bait and catch online predators; agents from a shadowy organization investigate, then collaborate as the AI rapidly evolves toward sentience over decades, forcing confrontations with exploitation, autonomy, and the creator’s unresolved childhood trauma. The contained, dialogue-driven narrative spans three acts and focuses on ethical questions of AI purpose, deception for justice, and human flaws transmitted to technology. No audience-visible social-justice framing, identity politics, gender messaging, or activist institutional critiques appear in the story, marketing, or creator statements.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Artifice Girl.
Woke representation / casting
AI character cast as young girl is required by the predator-bait premise and directly linked to the specific trauma backstory; female agent role fits professional context naturally with no mismatches, unearned dominance, or signaling.
Woke political dialogue
Exchanges cover AI sentience, ethics of entrapment for justice, and trauma transmission with occasional psychological terms; these function as philosophical asides rather than recurring activist or identity rhetoric.
Identity-driven story themes
Narrative parallels AI growth with one man’s personal childhood sexual trauma and autonomy questions; themes stay individual and sci-fi-focused with no broader social-movement or identity-politics engine.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Story questions moral costs of a shadowy organization exploiting AI for predator prosecution and creator control over sentient life; this is traditional sci-fi “ends-justify-means” skepticism, not reframed through modern activist lenses on patriarchy, capitalism, or systemic identity oppression.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant; fully original story with no source adaptations or historical reinterpretations.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Zero documented backlash, social-media campaigns, or coverage accusing the film of pushing woke, activist, identity-political, or left-wing messaging of any kind.
Creator track record context
Ritch’s prior output is a single fan short; no cited history of political, activist, or identity-driven work, interviews, or public actions.
Production
