Movies

See also: Guides

Artificial intelligence has been one of the most durable subjects in cinema since at least the 1920s, when Fritz Lang's Maschinenmensch in Metropolis (1927) set the template for the screen robot. The list below is a working filmography of movies, documentaries, and TV series where artificial intelligence, robots, or related ideas drive the plot, plus a separate section for productions that used generative AI tools during filmmaking. Entries cite release year, director or showrunner, and the production company or distributor where known.^[17][18]

Overview

AI on screen tends to cycle between two moods: the helpful or sympathetic machine (HAL pre-malfunction, Wall-E, Samantha in Her, Baymax) and the apocalyptic one (Skynet, the replicants of Blade Runner, M3GAN). Documentaries have multiplied since around 2017, when AlphaGo's victory over Lee Sedol made machine learning a mainstream story.^[1] After ChatGPT launched in November 2022, AI also became a production tool. Films like The Brutalist and Here used voice cloning and de-aging,^[8][10] and Hollywood began wrestling with the labor questions that drove the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.^[15][16]

This page tries to stay narrow. A film counts if AI is a central character, a major plot device, or the subject of the documentary. Productions that merely use VFX are excluded unless the AI usage itself became a news story.

Documentaries

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Feature films, fictional AI stories

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TV series

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Animated and anime AI films

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Films made with significant AI tools

A separate category for productions whose use of generative AI became a story in itself. Inclusion here is descriptive, not endorsement; many of these uses sparked controversy.

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Music videos and shorts made with generative AI

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Themes

A few recurring questions show up across this list:

Personhood. Bicentennial Man, A.I., Ex Machina, Star Trek: TNG's The Measure of a Man, and After Yang all return to whether a sufficiently sophisticated machine deserves rights. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics hover over all of them.

Romance. Her, Bicentennial Man, Electric Dreams, Zoe, Companion, and the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back keep coming back to whether a relationship with an AI counts as real. Her in particular has aged unusually well; many people now talk to large language models in ways the 2013 film anticipated.

Surveillance. Person of Interest, Eagle Eye, Minority Report, Coded Bias, and iHuman connect AI to government and corporate monitoring.^[2][7] The Great Hack shifts the lens to data brokers and election interference.^[5]

Alignment and existential risk. 2001, The Terminator, The Matrix, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Transcendence, and The Creator run different versions of the same story: a smart system pursues a goal poorly specified by its makers. The documentary Do You Trust This Computer? foregrounds the same question without fictionalization.^[6]

Labor. WALL-E, Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008), Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013), and The Mitchells vs. the Machines circle the displacement of work by automation. After 2023, that question moved off screen and into Hollywood's actual labor negotiations.

Critical context

The AI-themed film boom of 2014-2015 (Her in late 2013, Transcendence in April 2014, Ex Machina in early 2015, Chappie in March 2015, Ex Machina's wider release that summer, Avengers: Age of Ultron in May 2015) coincided with the deep learning revolution that followed AlexNet (2012). A second wave is happening now, after ChatGPT (November 2022). M3GAN, The Creator, Atlas, and the M3GAN 2.0 sequel all sit in that second wave.

Documentary output similarly tracks public anxiety. Between 2018 and 2024, films focused on facial recognition (Coded Bias),^[2] platform manipulation (The Great Hack, The Social Dilemma),^[3][5] and broad existential framings (Do You Trust This Computer?, iHuman).^[6][7] The TED-style AI Dilemma presentation by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin in March 2023 has been viewed many millions of times and is widely cited inside the AI safety community.

For production use of AI, the 2023 WGA strike won contractual language that prohibits studios from using AI to write or rewrite scripts and requires disclosure when AI-generated material is shown to writers.^[15] The SAG-AFTRA strike produced similar protections around digital replicas of performers.^[16] Both contracts expire in 2026, so this is an open situation rather than a settled one.

See also

• Artificial intelligence
• Generative AI
• Books
• Sora
• Runway
• Respeecher
• Three Laws of Robotics
• AI alignment
• Black Mirror
• Westworld series
• Her
• Ex Machina
• WGA
• SAG-AFTRA
• AlphaGo
• DeepMind

References

1. *AlphaGo* (2017), Moxie Pictures, directed by Greg Kohs. Distribution via Netflix. ↩
2. *Coded Bias* (2020), 7th Empire Media, directed by Shalini Kantayya. Featured the Algorithmic Justice League. ↩
3. *The Social Dilemma* (2020), Exposure Labs and Netflix, directed by Jeff Orlowski. ↩
4. *Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World* (2016), Magnolia Pictures, directed by Werner Herzog. ↩
5. *The Great Hack* (2019), Netflix, directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim. ↩
6. *Do You Trust This Computer?* (2018), Papercut Films, directed by Chris Paine. ↩
7. *iHuman* (2019), UpNorth Film, directed by Tonje Hessen Schei. ↩
8. Variety reporting on *The Brutalist* and Respeecher, January 2025. ↩
9. Variety, *Emilia Pérez* on Respeecher voice extension, November 2024. ↩
10. Robert Zemeckis press interviews on Metaphysic in *Here*, October 2024. ↩
11. The Hollywood Reporter on *Alien: Romulus* digital recreation of Ian Holm, August 2024. ↩
12. NPR and Wired reports on Sonantic voice cloning for Val Kilmer in *Top Gun: Maverick*, May 2022. ↩
13. The Verge on *Late Night with the Devil* AI imagery, March 2024. ↩
14. The Daily Beast on *True Detective: Night Country* AI promotional images, January 2024. ↩
15. Writers Guild of America East summary of 2023 MBA contract terms on AI. ↩
16. SAG-AFTRA July 2023 strike platform on digital replicas. ↩
17. IMDB and Letterboxd cross-references for release year and director on all entries. ↩
18. Wikipedia entries for each film and series listed. ↩