What is love, really?

Rating: Null/10 (6 June 2014)

Rather than think about what time in the near future this story might be set, I prefer to think of it as an alternate Earth that developed its technology a bit different from what we actually experienced.
It opens with Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore at his job. He is at a desk and dictating beautiful, emotional words, as those words get written in script on paper right before him. He, and a number of others in cubicles, work for a company that writes letters for people to send to their loved ones. Presumably they also submit handwriting samples, because each looks like different cursive script.
Theodore seems like a nice guy but he is just breaking up with his wife. He is a bit lost it seems, and as luck would have it he is getting a new operating system, and OS1, for his computer. It is the latest and greatest. OS1 is on the cutting edge of A.I. and it has a personality. You can choose either male or female when you first boot it up.
So Theodore boots his up, naturally specifies a female, and for the rest of the movie we hear the glorious vocal tones of Scarlett Johannson as the OS1 voice, and she names herself Samantha. But the honeymoon is destined to end because as Samantha learns and changes but using her instantaneous and powerful searching and learning abilities, she will soon become too much for Theodore to handle.
To me this story is playing on at least a couple of concepts. One would be the increasing reliance some people have on their devices, texting, picture-sharing, social media, computer games, all resulting in less and less human contact. In our real lives today, most people seem much more comfortable exchanging text messages than actually talking to someone.
The other theme that is foremost is the idea of love and how do we fall in love. Theodore actually falls in love with Samantha, his operating system. And he isn't reluctant at all to tell others about it. But isn't the idea of being in love with a computerized voice the height of self- delusion?
Anyway this cannot end very well, and I suppose each of us has to take away what we want from the movie.
SPOILERS: Samantha quickly develops "relationships" online with many other persons, thousands. And, she tells Theodore that she is in love with over 600 of them. She pleads with him, trying to convince him that doing so doesn't take away from what the two of them have. That she has the capacity to give proper attention to all of them. (Sounds almost like some people do in real life!) In the end, discouraged, Theodore and his good friend, played by Amy Adams, go to the roof of their high-rise, and sitting not too far from the edge the picture fades to black, and during the credits we hear sirens. Does that mean they jumped to their deaths, to finally be in union with the personalities of the Os? It isn't clear.