Cam streaming now on Netflix – Copyright Netflix
If you’ve just gotten to the end of CAM on Netflix and are scratching your head, you’re not alone. We’ve been scouring the internet and forums to try and come up with an explanation to some of the biggest takeaway questions you’ll have after finishing CAM on Netflix.
In case you haven’t watched CAM on Netflix just yet, we advise you to go and do so before reading this post as obviously, spoilers are ahead. Need a push to jump in? Check out the trailer added just below. Our hot take on it is that it could quite easily be put into a Black Mirror episode and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Let’s quickly tie some of the events up of the film. Alice is a cam girl who is steadily rising up the ranks of an online cam site where users tip serious money to either influence or interact with the streamer. There are real sites like this that exist which a quick search on search engines will reveal.
What happened to Alice (Lola_lola)?
As you know, Lola_lola’s account was hijacked the morning after her Sybian ride that Alice did to break into the top 50. The hijacking would’ve happened sooner if it weren’t for PrincessX’s attempt at diminishing Alice’s ranking on the website.
You may have worked out by now (and this has been confirmed by the creator) that Lola was, in fact, an AI. There are still a few questions to be answered which we’ll go into below but essentially, a piece of software learned enough about Lola to accurately replicate her voice, personality (to some limits) and her act. The AI picks out top streamers to replicate and then hacks into their accounts.
Is this technology real?
To some extent, the technology already exists. Of course, this movie takes the concept of AI replicating people to new levels. One of the key technologies is called Deep Faking which has been plaguing the internet as of late and many sites and communities have gone to great efforts to block and ban it.
We also know the AI learns from each streamers behaviors to replicate what they do on screen. For example, the AI knew what a big reaction the suicide attempt scored the first time around so naturally stepped it up for the second go.
There are some drawbacks to the AI. Alice spots that Baby and the Lola AI shared similar sentences. It was likely grabbing sentences from a bank of known phrases and words by the streamers.
Throughout, we see the AI version glitching. This is likely when the program controlling it cannot either emulate, predict or render the outcomes. It struggled to emulate the broken nose at the end for example.
The AI is certainly not self-aware however. It was clear when Lola and Alice first met that Lola couldn’t see that the two looked alike.
Who’s behind the hijacking and clone?
This question is never properly answered. We don’t believe it’s Barney or Tinker. Barney clearly believed that Hannah Darin was still alive as he had met her previously and saw her continue to stream. Barney was also surprised to see Alice go live at the diner.
Tinker had a suspicion that they were replicating streamers but that’s only likely because of the pure amount of time he spent with each online. The only drawback to this is that Tinker did say he worked in IT which obviously has a crossover with AI.
The likely answer and the answer most forums like Reddit comes to is that it’s either the streaming site itself or another big tech company doing it. Running an AI like this is no small task and would require serious money to keep it going. We know the streaming site already takes 50% of a streamers revenue but it would make sense to take 100% plus more because an AI wouldn’t need to rest and take time off as a human would.
Who is EveBot?
In the end, Alice creates a new account seemingly with a fake ID and the consent of her mother. She goes to create a new profile and continue streaming under a new identity. Her goal is unknown although she does say she’ll just start up again should she get cloned once again.
Who killed Hannah Darin?
Hannah was 25 when passed away. The webpage that Alice lands on is a eulogy to the prom queen and the now streamer. Her reason for death isn’t actually stated. It could’ve been the case that she took her own life with the stress of an AI taking her place. Alice was clearly driven to near insanity with her identity taken. Some theories online say the AI company or Tinker killed her but there’s no evidence to support that.
What’s the message or lesson here?
What I personally took away from this is that despite Lola being a character of Alice, it had become her personality that she was entwined to. The stealing of her livelihood and character almost felt she was being robbed of what was her. It could show that we put too much emphasis and attention on our digital selves and that they’re more or of equal value to our physicals selves.
There are still holes in this movie that likely won’t even be solved but we’d be interested in hearing your theories below.
