Few topics have been on the minds and lips of the world more in recent years than the rise of AI. From a purely fictional sci-fi concept a mere few decades ago, to the primitive novelty chatbots of the 90s and 2000s to the Large Language Models of today, artificial intelligence has rapidly advanced in both complexity and in its involvement in day-to-day life. With that rise to ubiquity comes many questions, concerns and discussions about AI, including its appearance in two of humanity’s greatest artistic mediums: film and television.
A great deal of art has been made about AI, all the way back to its conceptualization in the 1950s (and arguably before), including many TV shows and movies. While AI is a common topic in those mediums, generally the issue is handled mostly on the surface level as a plot device (usually as a murderous enemy), but when thinking of it as a real thing, it’s useful to find the media that is most realistic about AI, and that’s just what these shows and films do.
10 The Orbital Children Shows a Time When AI Is In Every Device
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
6.4/10 | 63% (audience score, no critics score) |
Using the term “realistic” to describe The Orbital Children, a semi-satirical very imaginative anime set on a space station in the future, might seem off, but when it comes to portrayals of what AI might turn into if humanity follows on its current path (and doesn’t get destroyed in the process), it’s an extremely prescient TV show. The Orbital Children depicts a time when AI is hooked into everything, with AIs of different complexities, capabilities and even personalities inhabiting almost every object. From breathing apparatuses to floating assistants to massive ship-wide systems, basically everything that has any electronic function has had an AI of some level of intelligence implemented into it.
The show follows a group of people, mostly kids, who get trapped on a space station orbiting the Earth after it’s damaged, and they have to use wits and technology in order to survive. The Earth of the show is living in the shadow of a massive historical event when the smartest, most powerful AI in history called “Seven” (not to be confused with The Boys‘ The Seven) went “crazy” (called the “Lunatic Seven” incident) after it reached an extreme level of intelligence, causing chaos across the planet and spitting out a seemingly random data mass of images and words called “The Seven Poem.” Since then, AIs have had limiters placed on them to keep them from doing the same, and throughout the show, which deals with tech in a very extensive way including social media and the internet, the stranded group has to deal with various AIs of different temperament and intelligence levels. The Orbital Children is a fun and still fairly terrifying look at what could happen if AI is pursued to the extreme degree.
9 The Blade Runner Series Is Still Among the Best Discussions of What It Means to Be (In)Human
Project | IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|---|
Blade Runner (1982) | 8.1/10 | 89% |
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) | 8.0/10 | 88% |
Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 (2017) | 7.3/10 | n/a |
2036: Nexus Dawn (2017) | 6.9/10 | n/a |
2048: Nowhere to Run (2017) | 6.8/10 | n/a |
Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021-2022) | 6.3/10 | 71% |
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How Blade Runner 2049’s Baseline Test Works
Thanks to the Voight-Kampff test from the original film, the baseline test in Blade Runner 2049 was possible to determine a serviceable replicant.
It will surprise few to see Blade Runner on this list, but there’s a reason that this most beloved franchise remains important to the conversation about artificial intelligence. Starting from the 1968 Phillip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that inspired the original 1982 Blade Runner film and now extending to another film, an animated show, a number of shorts and another upcoming show (reportedly called Blade Runner 2099), the legacy of Blade Runner in conversations about artificial intelligence is so tremendous that it’s hard to undersell. Particularly, the two films and their Voight-Kampff and “baseline” tests, respectively, represent two major concepts about AI.
The Voight-Kampff test in the original Blade Runner is designed to determine whether a being is an android with an artificial intelligence or not (based on whether it has empathy), similar to the Turing test that has long been held as the standard in real life for whether a machine has consciousness. The Turing test has been highly criticized as being inadequate, and in fact has been passed many times, and Blade Runner‘s Voight-Kampff is presented in a similarly critical light in the franchise. The “baseline test” of Blade Runner 2049 is meant to determine whether an artificial intelligence is behaving correctly, something that also has echoes in the way people test AIs for correct answers today. The series also dives deep into other heady AI concepts such as memories, asking whether a machine implanted with them actually has a real personality/history or not, and Blade Runner remains one of the most intellectually stimulating and challenging pieces of media on artificial intelligence to this day.
Blade Runner
- Director
- Ridley Scott
- Release Date
- June 25, 1982
- Cast
- Harrison Ford , Rutger Hauer , Sean Young , Edward James Olmos , M. Emmet Walsh , Daryl Hannah , William Sanderson , Joe Turkel
- Writers
- Hampton Fancher , David Webb Peoples , Philip K. Dick
- Runtime
- 1 Hour 57 Minutes
- Production Company
- The Ladd Company, Shaw Brothers, Warner Bros., Blade Runner Partnership.
8 The AI of Summer Wars Uses the “Internet of Things” to Cause Chaos
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
7.4/10 | 79% |
Summer Wars is a very interesting depiction of AI, because unlike most others on this list, its AI isn’t placed into a physical body. Instead, the AI in Summer Wars (by famed creator Mamoru Hosada), called Love Machine, exists in a massively popular virtual world called OZ, which is essentially a full-immersion virtual reality version of the internet and/or social media. In the world of Summer Wars, OZ has become a world almost as important as physical reality, with pretty much everyone spending a lot of their time there in custom avatars. Love Machine is a former US military weapons system that’s gained sentience inside of the program, and it uses a young computer whiz named Kenji to crack an encryption that accidentally allows Love Machine access to much of the internet’s infrastructure.
Because so many major systems and important devices are now hooked up to the internet, such as traffic control systems, pacemakers and satellites, Love Machine has the ability to cause widespread chaos, which it does, seeing everything as a game. The film follows Kenji and a large family that’s part of the Takeda clan as they attempt to thwart Love Machine, all while dealing with interpersonal issues. With so many devices in the real world now hooked up to the “internet of things,” and the fact that if a powerful AI actually does arise it will probably be an internet-based consciousness (and not a robot), Summer Wars stands as one of the most believable “killer AI” situations, and one that could possibly be not that far off in the future.
Summer Wars
- Release Date
- August 1, 2009
- Cast
- Ryûnosuke Kamiki , Nanami Sakuraba
- Runtime
- 1 hour 45 minutes
- Production Company
- Madhouse, Nippon Television Network (NTV), Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co., D.N. Dream Partners, Warner Bros., Yomiuri Television, Video Audio Project (VAP)
7 Ex Machina Asks If Humans Own Their Creations
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
7.7/10 | 92% |
Another no-brainer for this list, Ex Machina is one of the deepest and most chilling movies about AI made yet. About a programmer who is invited to a tech CEO’s home where he is supposed to test a robot named Ava to see if her artificial intelligence has reached consciousness, Ex Machina is the directorial debut of sci-fi luminary writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Sunshine, later directed and wrote Annihilation and Civil War). A tense, building tale of what it means to be a person, Ex Machina once again uses the Turing test as a central plot point as programmer Caleb questions the captive Ava.
The film features numerous twists that would be criminal to reveal, but suffice it to say, this film does not hesitate to present the twistiest, most confounding questions about consciousness and the morality of creating AIs to its audience. One of the major themes it pursues is whether or not humans have or should have ownership over a consciousness if they created it, and it also questions what it means to be alive at all. Featuring god-tier performances from Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, Alicia Vikander as android Ava and, particularly, Oscar Isaac as narcissistic ultra-rich CEO Nathan Bateman, Ex Machina is perhaps thebest live-action film about artificial intelligence, what it actually is and how humans relate to it.
Ex Machina
A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.
- Director
- Alex Garland
- Release Date
- April 24, 2015
- Cast
- Alicia Vikander , Domhnall Gleeson , Oscar Isaac
- Writers
- Alex Garland
- Runtime
- 1 Hour 48 Minutes
- Production Company
- A24, Universal Pictures, Film4
6 After Yang is a Different Kind of AI Film: One About Loss
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
6.6/10 | 89% |
After Yang is another near-future android film, but unlike most such movies, it’s not an action film or even a thriller. In fact, After Yang is the rare AI film that takes an empathetic, even positive stance on the technology, as it depicts a family of a father, wife and adopted daughter who have grown close to their AI android companion named Yang. Yang is malfunctioning and the family can’t afford to fix him, and the quiet, contemplative film shows them trying to find ways to save Yang and processing his potential loss as a loved member of their family.
Thoughtful and meditative, After Yang is a gorgeously shot vision of a future where machine consciousness is complicated and existentially fraught but not violent, and as its characters find out more about the history of their essentially dead companion, they learn more about what it means to be human and to have relationships with others. It’s a beautiful and poignant movie, and Colin Farrel as the father shows his tremendous range as an actor by playing a very toned-down version of himself that often results in heart-wrenching scenes of grief and humanity. While the actual future of AI and its relationship to humanity is a huge question mark at this point, After Yang is a lovely counterpoint to the typical “rogue AI” film, and it could very well represent the actual world when machines start to think for themselves and integrate into society.
5 World on a Wire Is One of the Most Underappreciated AI Films
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
7.7/10 | 98% |
Of the movies and shows on this list, by far the one that has the smallest cultural footprint is 1973 German miniseries World on a Wire, and there’s a big reason for that. Originally shown on TV, there was no print available for the public to watch for decades until it was restored for the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010 and subsequently put onto DVD. Because of that, few have still seen World on a Wire, a masterpiece by genius director and central figure of the New German Cinema movement, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
While it came out far before anything resembling AI was even close to existing, the concept of a thinking machine has been in the sci-fi zeitgeist for a long time, and World on a Wire is one of the most philosophical and high-concept takes on the idea ever made. Focused on a supercomputer that is simulating the lives of 9,000 “identity units” who have no idea that they aren’t actual humans living in the real world, the film follows a scientist at the Institute for Cybernetics and Futurology who finds himself in charge of the simulated world after his superior dies mysteriously. The resulting situation is a deeply thoughtful and existential experiment in what it is to be “real,” and the conceptual playground it runs through predates media like The Matrix by over 25 years. It’s an incredible, stylish, weird film, and lucky for viewers today, it’s available in full with subtitles on YouTube.
4 Serial Experiments Lain Is a Brain-Melting Exploration of Humanity Merging with Technology
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
8.1/10 | 86% (audience score, no critics score) |
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How to Get Started With Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain has become more popular than ever through TikTok, and the cyberpunk anime is hugely influential.
For a list full of strange and even experimental media, Serial Experiments Lain sits above everything else in a category of weirdness all its own. A massively influential anime, the show came out in 1998, airing at 1:15 a.m. in Japan, and Serial Experiments Lain quickly received huge praise and a dedicated fandom for its trippy, richly philosophical approach to a world where the internet has become ubiquitous. The anime won an Excellence Prize at the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival, which they said they awarded it for “its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life” and for asking “extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions.”
That’s exactly what Lain does in its short 13-episode run, which follows high school junior Lain Iwakura as she becomes more and more enmeshed in the world of the internet, called “The Wired” in the show. The incredible and head-spinning events of the show begin when Lain and some of her fellow students receive an e-mail from a deceased classmate named Chisa, who Lain contacts through an old computer. Chisa tells Lain that she has “abandoned her physical self” and lives in The Wired, where she has found God. Following this thread, Lain finds a natural talent for computers, along with a torrent of deep questions about identity and reality. Explaining what exactly Serial Experiments Lain has to do with artificial intelligence would be to ruin what is still one of the most rewarding TV experiences available today, but for anyone interested in the subject, it is a must-watch.
Serial Experiments Lain
- Release Date
- July 6, 1998
- Cast
- Kirk Thornton , Bridget Hoffman , Shō Hayami , Kaori Shimizu , Ryūsuke Ōbayashi , Barry Stigler
- Seasons
- 1 Season
- Creator
- Chiaki J. Konaka
- Producer
- Yasuyuki Ueda, Shōjirō Abe
- Production Company
- Pioneer LDC, Triangle Staff
- Number of Episodes
- 13 Episodes
3 Black Mirror Does Indeed Mirror What’s Happening in AI
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
8.7/10 | 83% |
After Blade Runner, British Netflix anthology show Black Mirror is probably the least surprising entry on this list, but that doesn’t change the fact that it contains some of the most nuanced and well-loved depictions of artificial intelligence yet put to film. With 27 episodes over six seasons that focus on various concepts of futurism and technology, not all of Black Mirror is about AI, but plenty does incorporate the concept, whether it’s directly or in the form of an android or highly advanced computer. Particularly, episode “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” features an AI-imbued doll of fictional pop singer “Ashley O” (Miley Cyrus), who eventually becomes fully conscious, a concept that has major echoes in the recent conflicts between artists and corporations over AI material made using input from said artist without the artist’s consent.
Another episode, “Joan is Awful,” deals with a similar situation, where the life of a woman named Joan (Annie Murphy) has her daily life copied into a CGI TV show, which uses a quantum computer and AI to do so because Joan signed away her rights, another very real contemporary concern. Perhaps most famous of the Black Mirror AI episodes, though, is Series 2 Episode 1, “Be Right Back.” In it, a woman named Martha (Hayley Atwell) loses her boyfriend Ash (Domhnall Gleeson, in his second appearance on this list) in an accident, and her friend signs her up for a service that takes all of Ash’s social media and digital communications and creates a chatbot that emulates him. AIs simulating dead loved ones is quite literally a service that exists today, arriving very shortly after the spread of Large Language Model AIs and called “griefbots,” “deadbots” and “ghostbots.” The practice is as controversial as it is a booming industry, and Black Mirror belongs on this list for that episode alone, which is frequently cited as one of the series’ best.
Black Mirror
- Release Date
- December 4, 2011
- Cast
- Michaela Coel , Hannah John-Kamen , Douglas Hodge , Brian Pettifer , Zazie Beetz , John Hamm , Aaron Paul
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
- Seasons
- 6
- Creator
- Charlie Brooker
- Writers
- Charlie Brooker
- Number of Episodes
- 27
2 Her Explores the Intimate Side of Artificial Intelligence
IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|
8.0/10 | 95% |
Like After Yang, Her is not an action film at all, instead being another emotional and contemplative approach to the concept of AI becoming part of the fabric of society. Starring Joaquin Phoenix in one of his best roles, Her is about a lonely man named Theodore who has a hard time connecting with people in person and who is about to get divorced. Theodore buys a new operating system that comes with an AI virtual assistant; the OS names itself Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), quickly showing herself to be capable of independent thought, growth and emotional connection. A true romance story about a relationship between a human and a digital consciousness, Her is airy in tone, beautiful, complex and extremely emotionally gripping, and it’s become one of the most well-reviewed and widely loved films about AI of the current age. Without spoiling the ending, Her tackles two potentially very real questions, if AI does ever gain full consciousness: How will humans and AI have relationships, and what happens if the AIs keep advancing in intelligence and complexity?
Her gives an answer that one will have to watch to discover, but this important question is only part of why the film’s on this list. Perhaps bizarrely and possibly predictably, when AI voice chatbots became a thing, AI corporation OpenAI tried to license Johannson’s voice for their bot, even going so far as to make one very similar when she declined. Even weirder, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said Her is his favorite movie, and the resulting controversy has made major headlines and certainly earned the film a spot on this list.
1 The Ghost in the Shell Series Remains the Preeminent Media Franchise About All Things Tech
Project | IMDB Rating | Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|---|---|---|
Ghost in the Shell (1995) | 7.9/10 | 95% |
Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (2004) | 7.4/10 | 65% |
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-2005) | 8.5/10 | 67% |
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society (2006) | 7.8/10 | 91% (audience score, no critics score) |
Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013-2015) | 7.1/10 | n/a (each season individually scored) |
Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie (2015) | 6.6/10 | 72% |
Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 (2020-2022) | 6.4/10 | 21% |
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RETRO REVIEW: Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is One of the Greatest Sequels of All Time
Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a profound, mysterious masterpiece that asks more of its audience.
No conversation about AI in media is complete without talking about seminal cyberpunk anime Ghost in the Shell, which started with a manga before its first film adaptation with 1995’s classic movie by the same name. The story of cyborg Major Motoko Kusanagi and the mid-twenty-first-century Japanese crime task force she works for (in most of the iterations) called Public Security Section 9, Ghost in the Shell has expanded beyond that initial film into numerous other works, including more manga, TV shows, movies and video games. As one of the iconic anime and cyberpunk media in general, Ghost in the Shell is beloved for its characters, look and frenetic action, but there’s more than just flash to this incredible franchise.
Ghost in the Shell is as much, and often even more, about the philosophical and existential issues and questions surrounding humanity’s future with technology, including concepts of crime, cybernetic augmentation, hacking, media and just about every other tech issue there is. What GitS is mostly concerned about is how these techs, as they get more and more advanced and integrated into society, affect people, especially when it comes to identity and the relationship of the mind (the ghost) to the body (the shell). Major Kusanagi is almost synonymous with such questions, the franchise is so impactful, and while she isn’t exactly an AI herself, the various iterations of Ghost in the Shell absolutely tackle AI. All things considered, the Ghost in the Shell franchise is one of the most important pieces of technology-centric media of all time.
Ghost in the Shell
- Director
- Mamoru Oshii
- Release Date
- November 19, 1995
- Studio
- Production I.G
- Cast
- Atsuko Tanaka , Akio Otsuka , Iemasa Kayumi
- Writers
- Masamune Shirow , Kazunori Itô
- Runtime
- 1 Hour 23 Minutes
- Franchise
- Ghost In The Shell
- Production Company
- Kôdansha, Bandai Visual Company, Manga Entertainment.
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