LOVEA2.EXE: A Screenplay exploring emotional dependency due to artificial intelligence and simulated love
This creative thesis explores human emotional dependency on technology through a screenplay of a dystopian psychological drama titled LOVEA2.EXE. Set in the near-future city of Surabaya in 2046, the narrative depicts a post-pandemic society in which humans have completely lost their biological capacity to feel or process emotions. The story follows the protagonist, James, who volunteers as the first test subject for an experimental AI brain chip called LOVEA2, designed by a scientist named Kayle, to automate emotional regulation. A major socio-psychological conflict arises when James falls in love with Anne, an assistant professor at the research department, who is secretly used by Kayle as a variable in his experiment. The conflict deepens when Anne reveals that her own emotions have spontaneously returned without any technological intervention, plunging James into an existential crisis regarding the authenticity of his feelings. This creative thesis applies to James J. Gross's Emotion Regulation Theory to examine the protagonist's internal psychological condition, along with S. Shyam Sundar's Human-AI Interaction perspective to analyze the tension between human agency and machine agency. The resulting film script demonstrates the consequences that occur when individuals surrender their emotional autonomy to automated systems, shows that the mechanical simulation of happiness offered by technology cannot replace the true essence of human identity, but instead traps humanity in a state of tragic self-alienation.