To Freedom: Annie Bot Book Review
Annie Bot by Siera Greer is a futuristic novel that explores a relationship between a male human and a female robot he purchased. Set at some point in the distant future robots, created from abandoned embryos, like Annie are the norm. These machines are the pinnacle of technology where the mechanics behind creating a thing that looks, feels, and sounds human has been achieved. What makes these machines even better is they are programmed to do whatever their owner wants and their sole reason for being alive is to keep their owner happy. David, our male protagonist, purchased Annie after his divorce and designed her to look like his ex-wife (only Annie is a couple shades lighter than her). Annie started out in the general housekeeping function but overtime David upgraded her to be a “Cuddle Bunny” a.k.a. his girlfriend.
Annie is the dream girlfriend. She doesn’t argue, she does whatever David wants her to, she has sex with him every night, he can control her body to look exactly the way he wants it to (if she is 110 pounds and he wants her to be 10 pounds lighter, no problem), and she will never leave David. She can’t, David tracks her through his phone. But Annie starts acting strange overtime. She’s sleeping with his best friend, she is challenging David, and she keeps having ideas about living her own life. David reports this behavior to the company who made Annie but they don’t find it weird, they see this behavior as Annie becoming more human (read: valuable) and eventually make plans to duplicate and sell versions of her to the masses.
There are many layers to this book especially to Annie that causes a reader to confront what it means to be human. Annie doesn’t possess one of the key traits that other humans possess: the ability to make a choice for herself. Ignoring certain aspects of privilege, I can choose to lay in bed, eat ice cream, and watch TV all day. I can choose to go to Italy tomorrow and get gelato. Annie can’t do all of these things; she is explicitly tied to and owned by David, taking away any type of free will she could hypothetically have. David makes all choices for Annie and she is programmatically unable to make a choice for herself that would lead to her living a life outside of David. Annie isn’t human but David conveniently forgets the power imbalance they have that gives him full control over Annie and their relationship. David never stops to think, would Annie want to be with him if she had the choice not to?
Siera Greer does a phenomenal job of giving readers a glimpse into a world where sentient robots exist. In today’s age with speculation around what a future that is AI led looks like, Greer’s world is one answer to this. Her application puts men at the center as consumers of this technology and women as the face of the technology meant to be owned by men. She did paint a bleak image that often had me thinking, at this level of technological advancement, this is what we chose to do with it? I’m probably being pessimistic but read it for yourself and let me know if you hate men more after.
