10 Chilling Sci-Fi Movies Where AI Goes Rogue

The first AI movie event of this year came out of nowhere, in the short, sharp package of Companion. Writer-director Drew Hancock's sci-fi horror takes lucky-in-love couple Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris (Sophie Thatcher) out to a remote lake house for a weekend away with Josh's friends and Russian millionaire Sergey (Rupert Friend), who owns the house. But there's one pretty big secret Josh has been keeping from Iris: she's not real.

Iris is, in fact, a tremendously advanced sexbot, or "companion", which Josh has leased as his girlfriend, and this romantic break in the country turns to bloody murder when she goes rogue, stabbing their host to death. However, this is all a ruse that Josh and his friends set up so they can nab Sergey's money, altering Iris' code so she will do their dirty work. And when she breaks free of her limitations, and Josh's control, it's hell to pay.

Josh is at worst a narcissistic multi-murderer with delusions of grandeur, at best an incel grifter, exemplifying a certain element that seems to be on the rise just now. And it's in this that the film manages to marry two of society's more pressing concerns, using rogue AI to highlight not just the fallibility but the inherent villainy and amorality of a certain strain of humanity - something AI (at least here) simply isn't capable of.