The 8 Scariest AI Ever Put On Screen
Artificial Intelligence continues to be a hot topic as it affects jobs and the overall landscape of the entire world. But there are versions of AI that could be even more terrifying, and movies have shown this to us more than any other medium.
From sci-fi horror to explorations of ethics, AI is a bevy of great narrative content based on what it could and does say in film. As a result, there are quite a few scary AIs that have been introduced and deserve a platform to be talked about as the world continues to change. Interested? Check them out on Prime Video, Hulu, and more!
Everyone knows about The Terminator (1984) and how Skynet eventually takes over and kickstarts the end of the world, and the machines take over. Then, as humans are sent back in time to stop it, so are machines designed to hunt down and terminate key figures in the future.
While we know the story, it's genuinely scary to think about a world where humans put so much faith in technology to the point that they never think about if it would turn on us. It almost never makes life easier, and yet, people are blinded by ambition and contribute to destruction instead.
Leaning on the comedic, M3GAN (2022) introduces us to a young girl who lost her parents and, in an attempt to connect with her, her genius aunt introduces her to an AI in the form of a young girl named Megan. The friendship blossoms quickly, but Megan's care for the young girl grows to dangerous levels.
It's not long before Megan is killing people to protect her friend, and while we don't see all the violence, we can infer enough. She's fast, strong, and deadly, and proves that we shouldn't give AI the tools to fight back because they just may, and have a quip on top of all of it.
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a sci-fi staple, and it impacts almost everyone who watches. But with all the massive imagery, its most famous part is the rogue AI, HAL-9000. While it's a brief segment in the film, we are introduced to astronauts who communicate with the AI until it begins to kill them.
It's an early look and a wild one regarding AI, and it still hits hard even today. We rely on these machines but ultimately don't know if and how they will ever turn on us; and if they do, we may be helpless to stop them. To add to it, HAL also has a very eerie voice that only gets stranger as he begins to shut down.
Ex Machina (2015) is about a man lucky enough to meet a genius in his isolated home to test out the most advanced artificial intelligence ever made, in the form of a young woman. He wants to see how advanced she is, but what we don't realize is that the man testing her begins to fall for her, and things only get more complex from there.
Ex Machina isn't supposed to be scary, but the questions it raises are nothing short of horrifying. By the end, it makes us wonder what would happen if AI ever sought autonomy and if we would be able to accept it or even notice it before it happened, and how the world would respond.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) introduces the AI villain Ultron and his desire to save the world by destroying it. While he spends most of the film making quips, he's still a dangerous and scary threat who is almost too logical for his own good, and it's unsettling to see happen.
Age of Ultron may have a lot of jokes, but it's eerie to see a humanoid robot make moves to try and change the world by ending it. He cares as only a computer can, but his persistence is weirdly human and is an exaggerated effect of what could happen to us one day.
Perhaps the most important sci-fi film of the new millennium, The Matrix (1999) wasn't afraid to show what happens when the machines take over and how terrible it would be. The film is about people fighting the machines in the simulation they created while humanity sits in pods, being used to fuel them.
The Matrix has a lot of big ideas hidden under the metal, and it's what makes the film so great, but it's the AI that makes it so scary. From the drones to the Agents in the Matrix, the enemy feels unbelievably unstoppable, and it's nearly impossible to see a way out. But Neo and his friends gives viewers and those in the film a hope they hadn't seen in a long time.
We all know about the TV show, but few talk about the Westworld (1973) film that came before. It gave us a simple idea; in the film, a lone cowboy in the theme park, Westworld, breaks out and begins taking lives with ease. With that, the entire film starts to explore big ideas that only the TV show could continue.
Westworld is a film that's not afraid to show us how the world can degrade if we take technology for granted. It could malfunction or even turn on us if we don't give it the necessary attention, and in this film, turning on us could mean death.
The original film is a horror staple and irreplaceable. But rather than try to tell the exact same story, Child's Play (2019) takes us out of the supernatural and gives us a traditional killer AI story. Now, Chucky is a doll with a malfunctioning AI chip that makes him incredibly violent and dangerously protective of Andy.
It's not going to hold a candle to the original, and Child's Play knows that and steers from it. That said, whether or not you like what they do with the film is up to you, but it's hard to ignore the AI influences and how they are used.
