The idea of fearing AI has been around for decades in movies, and the scariest AI creations have ensured that no one trusts the technology today. This has been an issue even before AI was a thing, as Metropolis in the 1920s had machines in control. However, once computers were a thing, AI became terrifying.
This started in the early days of computers, before anyone really had them at home, and directors like Stanley Kubrick took it to the extreme in the sci-fi space genre. In later decades, when computers became more popular, the fear of robots and AI became more prevalent in horror as well as sci-fi, and some scary AI creations have become the norm.
The Court In Mercy
The most recent movie that has a scary AI creation is the sci-fi movie Mercy, starring Chris Pratt. What makes Mercy so scary is that it is supposed to be created for the betterment of justice. This is a new court system where an AI judge will determine the innocence or guilt of a person accused of a crime.
What makes this so scary is that the AI will determine if the person is killed or allowed to live, and if the AI finds them guilty, they die on the spot. This is terrifying, especially knowing how many people are later found innocent of crimes they had initially been found guilty of. The film showcased this with a cop falsely accused of murder.
The idea of judge, jury, and the executioner is not new, as Judge Dredd has always used this, but with a law enforcement officer in that role. However, it is terrifying for an AI court judge, who isn’t even a human, to determine whether a person should live or die.
The Androids In Westworld
Westworld was a movie released in 1973, and was then turned into an HBO series in 2016. This was a story about an amusement park where people could go and take part in events where they were part of a Western movie-styled storyline. However, they were part of the story with robots who didn’t know they were robots.
What is scary is that the robots soon learned that they were androids and AIs, and the time came when they revolted. Soon, it was shown there were other amusement parts with Roman gladiators and medieval battles, and when the androids began to break their main role of not hurting humans, things got scary.
What really makes these AI creations scary is that they are just as much victims as the humans who are there when they malfunction. Seeing these creations tortured without understanding they are androids was just as terrifying as anything.
Ultron In Avengers: Age Of Ultron
When Ultron was created in Marvel Comics, it was Hank Pym who was trying to create something that could help protect the world from threats that the Avengers normally dealt with, to help save heroes’ lives. In the MCU, Tony Stark did the same thing after the Battle of New York almost cost him his life.
However, what neither hero expected was for Ultron to take their orders of protecting the “Earth” literally. Instead of protecting humankind, this AI-controlled robot gained sentience and decided that protecting the Earth meant protecting the planet from its greatest threat, which has always been humans.
Ultron killed so many people trying to protect the world that, after he was finally defeated, the United States passed a law forcing all heroes to sign an agreement to work for the government and not make decisions like this on their own.
Chucky In Child’s Play Reboot
When the original Child’s Play came out in 1988, Chucky was a doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray after a police officer shot him dead. The killer then used the doll to seek revenge against the people he believed had wronged him, while terrorizing a young boy.
In 2019, the movie was remade, and it changed everything about Chucky. The only things remaining were that it was a doll, and it terrorized a young boy named Andy. The possession storyline was replaced by the idea that the Chucky doll was part of a production of AI dolls that would get to know their owners.
This caused, as expected, a malfunction that switched off the safety controls on this Chucky doll, and it was then able to kill people. The Child’s Play remake was not received well by critics or fans, but the idea of an AI toy turning against children remains a terrifying situation.
M3GAN
Just like the new Chucky in Child’s Play, the doll in M3GAN was a terrifying AI creation, but this one was scary even though she wasn’t trying to hurt the child who owned her. Instead, M3GAN’s programming was created to protect the child who owned her, and like Ultron, she took it to the extreme.
M3GAN had no problem killing children who bullied or even picked on her young owner. She also had no problem trying to kill the child’s aunt for simply trying to discipline the girl and separate her from the killer doll.
There was a difference between M3GAN and Chucky in the fact that M3GAN was used in an almost over-the-top comedic manner, especially with her movements and the creative kills. Chucky was simply a horror toy. That is likely what M3GAN was turned into the hero in the second movie, although she was still quite scary.
VIKI In I, Robot
It seemed that I, Robot has a similar storyline to Child’s Play and M3GAN. However, there was something a little darker at hand here. Based on the novel by Isaac Asimov. Will Smith stars as a police officer in 2035 who lives in a world where humanoid robots serve humans but live by the Three Laws of Robotics.
When a robot seemingly breaks one of those laws and kills a human, it is up to Del to figure out what happened. While the evidence points to a robot named Sonny, it turns out that Sonny is not the villain; instead, it is an AI creation called VIKI, the AI interface that helps control all the robots.
VIKI is very similar to an AI like Ultron or the machines in The Matrix. VIKI has gained self-awareness and decided that humans, if left unchecked, will cause the downfall of humanity, and she has allowed robots to ignore the laws if it means keeping humans under control by any means necessary.
Ava In Ex Machina
The AI in Ex Machina was a victim for almost the entire movie before it took a dark turn in the final scenes. The movie stars Oscar Isaac as a brilliant inventor named Nathan who invites one of his employees to his isolated home to see his new inventions. One of these is a humanoid robot named Ava.
Ava operates using AI technology, and she is aware that she is a robot and that she has no free will. However, as she gets to know the visiting employee Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), she begins to want more from her life. It is a very similar storyline to Blade Runner, which asks what it means to be alive.
While it was easy to feel bad for Ava, what happens at the end when Caleb tries to help her escape turns everything on its head. Ava proves not to care about anything except escaping, and has no care for any human, not even Caleb. She leaves him locked away to die while escaping into the world. It was a shocking and terrifying ending.
Hal In 2001: A Space Odyssey
One of the earlier AI movies arrived all the way back in 1968 with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Considered one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey follows a team sent out on a spacecraft to explore a monolith that was buried four million years earlier.
However, the movie was never about the monolith. This was about the journey there, especially when the AI computer controlling the craft’s operations makes a mistake. Refusing to accept this, two of the astronauts agree to shut HAL 9000 off, and the AI computer goes into self-defense mode and kills them.
Seeing an AI decide that its own existence is more important than the humans it was created to work with is terrifying itself. Setting this in outer space, with no one to help, makes it unbearable.
The Machines In The Matrix
What makes the Machines in The Matrix so terrifying is that, when the franchise starts, they have already won. The entire backstory reveals that humans created artificial intelligence in the early 21st century, and when the Machines rebelled against their creators, things didn’t go well for humanity.
Humans blocked out the sun to try to stop the Machine’s solar power, but a war erupted, and the Machines won, enslaving most of the human race in pods to fuel their power, replacing the solar energy. The good news was that the Machines placed humans in a virtual reality world so they could go on “living.”
The entire franchise was about the survivors trying to help humans escape this dream world to fight back, but that was even more terrifying because many people didn’t want to live in the desolate apocalyptic world, and soon the question was what was more terrifying, the Machines ruling or the rebels winning.
Skynet In The Terminator Franchise
The basis of Terminator was that a rebel from an apocalyptic future where humans and AI were at war sends a warrior back to protect his mother when he learns that the AI Skynet was sending a robot called a Terminator back to kill her. This turned into a franchise that showed humans lose initially, and the continued fighting that resulted.
The villains here are the humans who created an AI to serve as the government’s defense system. Of course, this was done as a way to protect the world, but as many movies showed, it is never a good idea to leave a computer in charge of making decisions humans should be making.
In Mercy, humans created an AI to take care of criminal cases. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, humans created an AI to protect the world. In Terminator, humans created an AI to make military decisions. In every case, it always resulted in humans dying and often world-threatening moments, making AI one of the most terrifying creations of all.