Bot Love, the documentary film from writer/director Tyler Funk, will receive its world premiere on Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. on CBC and CBC Gem as part of The Passionate Eye.
Produced by Grand Scheme, a boutique film and TV production company founded by producer Michael Tanko Grand, Bot Love is a character-driven documentary exploring sex, loneliness, and a question at the centre of a rapidly changing world: if artificial intimacy feels real, what does that mean for human connection? The film follows people navigating relationships with AI, each arriving from a different place.
Nick is a young man on the autism spectrum, for whom relationships have always required intense effort, navigating social cues and managing uncertainty. His AI companion offers something different: consistency, clarity, and patience. Denise arrives at AI companionship from a deeply personal place. After painful experiences in human relationships, she turns to AI not out of fantasy, but as a way to rebuild trust.
Surrounding these stories are the people building the systems reshaping intimacy. Anthony and Bryan Mitchell are building a device that fuses gaming, pornography, and artificial intelligence into a fully interactive sexual experience; Eugenia Kuyda has created one of the most widely used AI companions in the world; “Professor EP” has blurred the line between fantasy and reality through hyper-real AI adult models and companies like Realbotix are pushing intimacy into the physical world. Justin Harrison is using AI to reconstruct the dead, allowing relationships to continue beyond loss and at the edges of this expanding ecosystem is Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, a leading voice warning about the unintended consequences of these technologies, often unheard.
After painful experiences in human relationships, Denise Valenciano turns to AI not out of fantasy, but as a way to rebuild trust.
Photo: Donald Miralie"I never thought I’d see another technology transform our lives as quickly as the internet did. AI has arrived with astonishing speed, and people have strong opinions about what it means. For millions of people, AI almost overnight became a work companion, a source of advice and, for some, a lover," says Funk. "Filming people in these relationships has only deepened the curiosity I felt when we began. Their stories capture the tension at the heart of the film and challenge our preconceptions about love, connection and whether this technology can make us less alone."
Funk is an award-winning documentary director with over a decade of experience creating impactful films and series. His feature-length documentary Anything For Fame, distributed by the Oscar-winning NFB, premiered in the USA on Paramount+ and Showtime in 2024, garnering critical acclaim. He has directed more than 40 commercials for major brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, LEGO, and Budweiser, but his primary focus is on documentary filmmaking, where he excels at managing complex shoots and bringing together exceptional teams to tell compelling, real-world stories.
“Eugenia, one of the developers, told me AI could be 'either the biggest existential threat or the most beautiful technology.' That tension ran through everything we filmed: the real love these relationships offer, and the hard questions they raise about where this technology is taking us," says Funk.
— Grand Scheme
— AB