When your girlfriend is an AI: Malayalam short film ‘Soosi’ rethinks romance and technology

AI is making steady inroads into different departments of cinema, but most filmmakers so far treat it either as a tool or a visual effect. Malayalam short film ‘Soosi’ takes a different approach. In this 17-minute short, the female lead is an AI avatar placed at the centre of a romantic story with a real human character. 

Directed by Jerry Titler, ‘Soosi’ has been attracting attention for its integrated use of AI. The film follows Akku, a young man struggling with loneliness, who creates an AI avatar named Soosi to keep him company. What begins as a functional interaction gradually transforms into an emotional connection, raising questions about companionship, dependency, and how technology is beginning to occupy spaces once reserved for human relationships.

‘Soosi’ is not a conventional love story. It quietly invites the audience to reflect on loneliness, the boundaries of AI, and how technology can influence our emotional lives. The interactions between Akku and Soosi go beyond a typical romantic connection, hinting at how people can be manipulated and how AI might subtly influence human behaviour. From the very start, there is something slightly off in their relationship, and Jerry says this was deliberate. Soosi has an ulterior motive, he explains, which will be explored further in a future project. 

It is impossible not to see echoes of Spike Jonze’s Hollywood film ‘Her’, where a lonely man forms an emotional bond with an AI operating system. Both films explore how artificial intelligence can elicit real emotional responses and fill human voids. The difference lies in presentation. While ‘Her’ relies on voice interaction and imagination to give the AI character presence, ‘Soosi’ gives her a tangible, visible form. This visual aspect allows the audience to experience her as a real presence in the same space as Akku. 

Jerry, a title animator by profession, handled nearly every aspect of the project himself, including scripting, editing, direction, and visual effects. The AI avatar was created in just one day using tools such as Midjourney, and the film was completed in three months. “Soosi is clearly an AI in the film. We are not trying to make her look fully human because the technology isn’t there yet,” Jerry says. “That limitation gave us creative freedom.”

While partly inspired by the Hollywood film ‘Ex Machina’, Jerry was primarily interested in how people emotionally interact with AI today. During his research, he noticed that most existing AI avatars are mainly designed for sexual or superficial interactions, with little focus on emotional depth. ‘Soosi’ moves away from that. The film imagines an AI companion built not for physical desire but for emotional comfort, making her interaction with Akku feel both futuristic and surprisingly relatable. 

One key creative decision was giving Soosi a human-dubbed voice. Jerry felt that automated AI voices sounded predictable and mechanical. “In the film, Soosi understands Akku’s emotions. If her voice sounded obviously artificial, that connection wouldn’t work,” he explains. Lip-syncing was primarily handled using Hedra AI, with additional support from tools such as Kling and OpenAI. 
Interestingly, ‘Soosi’ was not the original plan. Jerry initially wanted to make a female-centric crime thriller, but budget constraints and actor fees forced him to rethink the project. That pivot led to the idea of experimenting with an AI character, which ultimately shaped the film’s identity. 

Shot over two days in Kochi, the short was made on a modest budget of around ₹17,000. Despite its scale, the response has been strong. Viewers have particularly noted the ending, which avoids predictable turns. “Many people expected a typical conclusion, but they told me the film went somewhere else,” Jerry says. “That was encouraging.” 

Encouraged by the reception, Jerry is now considering expanding ‘Soosi’ into a feature-length project. The idea is to explore the concept further as AI becomes more embedded in everyday life. At its core, ‘Soosi’ is not about flashy technology. It is about how humans form connections, how loneliness can shape those connections, and the subtle ways AI might influence our emotional world. By giving the AI a visible form, a human voice, and emotional depth, the short film asks viewers to consider not just what AI can do, but what it means to have technology touch the most personal parts of our lives.