When you call Dr. Jeanine Salla, you get her voice mail. She says she's out, but she pleads, her voice ragged with emotion: "If you have any idea of how Evan, of all people, could die on a boat, then please tell me, because God knows I still can't believe it." There is a pause, then the line goes dead.

The call is real, but the voice on the other end isn't. Salla is a creation of Steven Spielberg, and apparently part of the most elaborate Web promotion of a movie since 1999's Blair Witch Project. As in Blair Witch, Spielberg uses a complex of sites to make it appear as if the characters and situations in his latest movie — AI Artificial Intelligence, due out June 29 — are real. The movie features the first robotic boy programmed to love, coexisting as a member of a family. But he finds acceptance neither by humans nor machines.

Internet fans are buzzing about the campaign, which like other recent movie promotions uses the Net to blur the lines between fact and fiction. But unlike other campaigns, which usually use one site, this one includes several mock sites of fictional future people, universities and political movements, such as one working to free non-human beings from slavery. Following links supplies you with working e-mail addresses, and even phone numbers such as Salla's.

If you send e-mail, you get automated responses telling you they're busy, or that they're robotic assistants. One character insults your outdated technology.

Word of the sites started spreading on the Net late last week, as the trailer was released on Countingdown.com. It contains such clues as a film credit for "Jeanine Salla"; plugging her name into a search engine results in a list of the sites.

Phillip Nakov of Countingdown.com (owned in part by Spielberg) says hundreds of thousands of people have watched the trailer. But Nakov insists there is one major difference between AI and Blair Witch. The latter "was all fake," he says wryly.

E-mail Janet Kornblum at jkornblum@usatoday.com.