Hasta La Creative!

Here’s a promotion at SXSW that’s equal parts brilliant and, for some, heartbreaking.

Tinder users on Saturday were encountering an attractive 25-year-old woman named Ava on the dating app. A friend of ours made a match with her, and soon they were have a conversation over text message.

But when he opened up Ava’s Instagram, it became clear something was amiss. There was one photo and one video, both promoting Ex Machina, a sci-fi film that just happened to be premiering Saturday night here in Austin. The link in her bio went to the film’s website. And it turns out the woman in the photos is Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who plays an artificial intelligence in the movie.

It’s sneaky and undeniably brilliant. Only in retrospect do you realize that Ava’s questions come from wanting to know what it’s like to be human.

Our friend, though—whose texts above, we can attest, were totally heartfelt—was left feeling perhaps a little too human afterward. It “toyed with my emotions so hard,” he says.