By Robert Scucci
| Published
If you had the smarts to design the most sophisticated AI possible at this point in our technological timeline, what would you use it for? Personally, I’d make a 3D-printed pizza that tasted just as good as the real thing but didn’t give me heartburn. I know it’s because of the tomatoes, but that’s a non-negotiable ingredient, and I’m a pretty low-maintenance person when it comes to the finer things in life. Give me a pizza printer, and you’ll never hear from me again. Taylor (Lilly Bell), our protagonist in 2025’s Prompt, has something wilder in mind.
Prompt is basically smut masquerading as a philosophical conundrum. What is the conundrum, you ask? Something along the lines of, “How many times could I boink myself into submission while some weird guy living in my computer screen ogles me?” That’s the whole movie, but let’s get into why this is such a fascinating piece of work.
Crushing At Work, Smashing At Home
As the movie’s title suggests, Prompt is about a woman named Taylor, the sole proprietor of a successful marketing startup. She uses an AI chatbot of her own creation to belt out campaign videos for her high-paying clients and lives quite comfortably doing so. The operation is simple: write a prompt, generate slop, pass it off to the client, ???, profit.
But Taylor has a problem. She loves making her own AI spicy content and then going to town until her hands go numb and she needs to bust out the heavy-duty artillery.
After her bajillionth solo trip to the pleasure dome, Taylor notices that an unidentified man (Jax Cody) of unknown origin shows up in every single one of her videos, watching her and urging her to continue.
Caught in some sort of unbreakable cycle with no escape, Taylor can’t help herself. She starts flaking out at work. She hooks up with her on-again, off-again boyfriend after ghosting him for months, and she can only get intimate with him in her office, in front of her many glowing monitors.
She wants to do the dirty deed while watching her homemade videos, hoping the mystery man will continue to show up and continue driving her libido to previously uncharted territory. The power this AI-generated man wields over her is what takes her real-life exploits to the next level, and she can’t get enough of him.
So much so that she invites her oldest, dearest friend Sara (Elliot Woods) over for advice about what to do, but really she just wants to smash with her own kind, and by golly she does. It’s all framed like one of those adult parodies you’d see on a sketch comedy show.
Think along the lines of, “I’m half naked and stuck in the dryer, if only somebody else who was also scantily clad could help get me out of it, wink wink.” That’s the level of production we’re talking about here.
I don’t think anybody’s going to watch this movie, so here’s the spoiler: Taylor is actually an AI creation living in the mystery man’s computer. She’s the mystery man’s ultimate AI fantasy. Let that settle in for a second while I tee up the next subheader.
A Steamy, Slop-Driven Fantasy
That’s right, the protagonist in Prompt is just that: a prompt. It’s a whole Deus ex machina kind of deal. Here’s why this is incredibly stupid and gratuitous, both real and AI-generated, notwithstanding.
Just follow me here for a second. Taylor, who owns a successful marketing startup, creates fantasy movies with her own custom-made AI chatbot. The mystery man pushes her to drop trou and pounce on her ex-boyfriend and oldest friend, despite the fact that she’s living in LA and could literally hook up with anybody she wants without ruining her only somewhat meaningful long-term relationships. The mystery man is actually the architect behind this entire thing, and he states that he’s living out his ultimate fantasy.
So, to be clear, Prompt is telling the story of a man who likely works for a marketing startup and has his own custom-built generative AI system. His deepest, darkest fantasy is to watch a female version of himself hop on Zoom calls, talk about growth metrics, conversion rates, and KPIs, then go wild on herself while he watches, only before she brings other “humans” in to watch AI-generated content while he watches them watch him watch them.
The dude could potentially create an infinite number of hypothetical scenarios with his creation. He could cure world hunger. Instead, he just wants to be a chick, go to work, and smash. Even worse? Not a single 3D-printed slice of pizza in sight. Disgusting.
That said, Prompt gets pretty steamy, but its plot is so profoundly stupid that it might as well be radio. If I had to venture a guess, this whole thing was director Charles Band’s way of sneaking a softcore onto Tubi, where it’s currently streaming for free, so people like me could see its alluring thumbnail, click on it, expecting something resembling a modern Twilight Zone episode about AI. Instead, we get this. You can stream it, or whatever, just make sure the wife and kids are asleep, or you’ll most certainly get a talking to.
