A.I. at the Movies

The idea of Artificial Intelligence or “A.I.” may not be as recent of a concept as you think. For nearly 100 years, the film industry has been coming out with a number of onscreen representations of artificial intelligence. These A.I. characters are both big and small and can be good or evil. They vary from the anthropomorphic to the clearly robotic. You’re probably well-acquainted with beloved popular A.I. figures like R2-D2 and WALL-E, but are you familiar with the first robot protagonist or the first-ever instance of A.I. on the silver screen?

Check out this awesome graphic that showcases the evolution of A.I.’s representation in the movies over time. The creators of the graphic Enlightened-Digital.com have an article over on their site (which you can find here) that highlights all the films. (There are too many to put them all in the graphic!) However, this graphic calls out some of the most famous moments in the timeline. I can’t believe the idea of artificial intelligence was in a movie all the way back in 1927! That’s 9 years before the invention of the first computer!

Huge thanks to Brian Thomas over at Enlightened-Digital for sending this over. For all you movie and tech fans out there, let’s take a look back at the cinematic inclusion of A.I. technology from the early days of film to present-day.

Let us know what you think! What’s your favorite representation of AI in a movie?