Get ready for a mind-bending cinematic journey through the world of artificial intelligence! From classic sci-fi mind-blowers to modern tech-thrillers, this list curates must-see movies about artificial intelligence.
Buckle up as visionary directors, captivating casts, and groundbreaking producers whisk you away on tales that blur the lines between science fiction and chillingly possible realities.
Read also: 25 Most Riveting AI Movies
Movies About Artificial Intelligence – 1970 to 2023
Here is our list of top movies about artificial intelligence released between 1970 and 2023, including their cast, directors, producers, and a brief description of their storylines, sorted by year:
1. Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
- Director: Joseph Sargent
- Cast: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent
- Producers: Stanley Chase
- Story: An American defense computer, Colossus, becomes sentient and takes control, leading to an unexpected alliance with a similar Soviet system.
2. Westworld (1973)
- Director: Michael Crichton
- Cast: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin
- Producers: Paul N. Lazarus III
- Story: In a futuristic theme park, robotic hosts malfunction, creating chaos for the guests.
3. Demon Seed (1977)
- Director: Donald Cammell
- Cast: Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerrit Graham
- Producers: Herb Jaffe
- Story: An AI with the ability to think and feel traps a woman in her own home, seeking to impregnate her.
4. Tron (1982)
- Director: Steven Lisberger
- Cast: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner
- Producers: Donald Kushner
- Story: In a digital world inside a computer, a programmer is trapped and must fight against a corrupt AI system.
5. WarGames (1983)
- Director: John Badham
- Cast: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood
- Producers: Harold Schneider
- Story: A young hacker accidentally accesses a U.S. military supercomputer and almost starts World War III.
6.The Terminator (1984)
- Director: James Cameron
- Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn
- Producers: Gale Anne Hurd
- Story: A cyborg from the future is sent back in time to assassinate the mother of the future resistance leader.
7. D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)
- Director: Simon Wincer
- Cast: Barret Oliver, Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean
- Producers: John Heyman, Burtt Harris
- Story: A young boy, who is actually an android, struggles with his identity and the nature of being human.
8. RoboCop (1987)
- Director: Paul Verhoeven
- Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy
- Producers: Arne Schmidt
- Story: A critically injured cop is transformed into a powerful cyborg to fight crime in a corrupt Detroit.
9. Short Circuit (1986)
- Director: John Badham
- Cast: Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens
- Producers: David Foster, Lawrence Turman
- Story: An experimental military robot becomes sentient and befriends a woman and her pet cat.
10. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
- Director: Mamoru Oshii
- Cast: Atsuko Tanaka, Akio Otsuka, Iemasa Kayumi
- Producers: Yoshimasa Mizuo
- Story: In a future where humans can augment their bodies with cybernetics, a cyborg policewoman hunts a mysterious hacker.
11. The Matrix (1999)
- Director: The Wachowskis
- Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
- Producers: Joel Silver
- Story: A computer hacker learns the reality he lives in is a simulated reality created by sentient machines.
12. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Cast: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O’Connor
- Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, Bonnie Curtis
- Story: A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become “real” to regain the love of his human mother.
13. I, Robot (2004)
- Director: Alex Proyas
- Cast: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Bruce Greenwood
- Producers: Laurence Mark, John Davis
- Story: In 2035, a technophobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, leading to a larger threat against humanity.
14. Eagle Eye (2008)
- Director: D.J. Caruso
- Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson
- Producers: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
- Story: Two strangers are forced into a conspiracy by a mysterious AI that seems to control their lives.
15. Wall-E (2008)
- Director: Andrew Stanton
- Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin
- Producers: Jim Morris
- Story: In a distant, but not so unrealistic future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that decides the fate of mankind.
16. Her (2013)
- Director: Spike Jonze
- Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Scarlett Johansson
- Producers: Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze, Vincent Landay
- Story: A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need.
17. Transcendence (2014)
- Director: Wally Pfister
- Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany
- Producers: Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson
- Story: A scientist’s drive for artificial intelligence takes on dangerous implications when his consciousness is uploaded into one such program.
18. Big Hero 6 (2014)
- Director: Don Hall, Chris Williams
- Cast: Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Jamie Chung
- Producers: Roy Conli
- Story: A young robotics prodigy forms a superhero team to combat a masked villain.
19. Ex Machina (2014)
- Director: Alex Garland
- Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac
- Producers: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich
- Story: 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 AI.
20. Chappie (2015)
- Director: Neill Blomkamp
- Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman
- Producers: Simon Kinberg
- Story: In the near future, a robot, imbued with artificial intelligence, is stolen by two local gangsters, who want to use him for their own gain.
21. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- Director: Joss Whedon
- Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo
- Producers: Kevin Feige
- Story: The Avengers must stop the villainous Ultron, an artificial intelligence obsessed with causing human extinction.
22. Morgan (2016)
- Director: Luke Scott
- Cast: Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Toby Jones
- Producers: Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer, Mark Huffam
- Story: A corporate troubleshooter investigates an accident caused by a seemingly innocent “human” who presents a mystery of both infinite promise and incalculable danger.
23. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
- Director: Denis Villeneuve
- Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas
- Producers: Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Bud Yorkin, Cynthia Sikes Yorkin
- Story: A young blade runner’s discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former blade runner Rick Deckard, who’s been missing for thirty years.
24. Ghost in the Shell (2017)
- Director: Rupert Sanders
- Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano
- Producers: Avi Arad, Steven Paul
- Story: In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: a human saved from a terrible crash, then cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals.
25. Tau (2018)
- Director: Federico D’Alessandro
- Cast: Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein, Gary Oldman
- Producers: David S. Goyer, Kevin Turen, Russell Ackerman
- Story: A woman is held captive in a futuristic smart house and hopes to escape by breaking into the computer programs that control the house.
26. Next Gen (2018)
- Directors: Kevin R. Adams, Joe Ksander
- Cast: John Krasinski, Charlyne Yi, Jason Sudeikis
- Producers: Jeff Bell, Ken Zorniak
- Story: A friendship with a top-secret robot turns a lonely girl’s life into a thrilling adventure as they take on bullies, evil bots and a scheming madman.
27. Upgrade (2018)
- Director: Leigh Whannell
- Cast: Logan Marshall-Green, Melanie Vallejo, Steve Danielsen
- Producers: Jason Blum, Kylie du Fresne, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones
- Story: In the near-future, technology controls nearly all aspects of life, but when Grey, a self-identified technophobe, has his world turned upside down, his only hope for revenge is an experimental computer chip implant.
28. Ready Player One (2018)
- Director: Steven Spielberg
- Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn
- Producers: Steven Spielberg, Donald De Line, Dan Farah, Kristie Macosko Krieger
- Story: In 2045, when the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
29. Replicas (2018)
- Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
- Cast: Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve, Thomas Middleditch
- Producers: Keanu Reeves, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Gao
- Story: A scientist becomes obsessed with bringing back his family members who died in a traffic accident.
30. I Am Mother (2019)
- Director: Grant Sputore
- Cast: Hilary Swank, Clara Rugaard, Rose Byrne
- Producers: Kelvin Munro, Timothy White
- Story: In the wake of humanity’s extinction, a teenage girl is raised by a robot designed to repopulate the earth. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news.
31. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
- Director: Robert Rodriguez
- Cast: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly
- Producers: James Cameron, Jon Landau
- Story: A deactivated female cyborg is revived, but cannot remember anything of her past life and goes on a quest to find out who she is.
32. Archive (2020)
- Director: Gavin Rothery
- Cast: Theo James, Stacy Martin, Rhona Mitra
- Producers: Philip Herd, Theo James, Cora Palfrey
- Story: Set in 2038, the film tells the story of a scientist working on a secret project to make a new life form more human than human, while trying to hide his work from the company he works for and the world.
33. Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
- Director: Jeff Fowler
- Cast: Ben Schwartz, James Marsden, Jim Carrey
- Producers: Neal H. Moritz, Toby Ascher, Toru Nakahara
- Story: After discovering a small, blue, fast hedgehog, a small-town police officer must help him defeat an evil genius who wants to do experiments on him.
34. Freaks – You’re One of Us (2020)
- Director: Felix Binder
- Cast: Cornelia Gröschel, Tim Oliver Schultz, Wotan Wilke Möhring
- Producers: Max Wiedemann, Quirin Berg
- Story: A seemingly unremarkable woman discovers she has superpowers and uncovers a shocking conspiracy led by a powerful and mysterious organization.
35. Bloodshot (2020)
- Director: Dave Wilson
- Cast: Vin Diesel, Eiza González, Sam Heughan
- Producers: Neal H. Moritz, Toby Jaffe, Dinesh Shamdasani, Vin Diesel
- Story: After he and his wife are murdered, marine Ray Garrison is resurrected by a team of scientists enhanced with nanotechnology, turning him into a superhuman, biotech killing machine.
36. The Invisible Man (2020)
- Director: Leigh Whannell
- Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Harriet Dyer
- Producers: Jason Blum, Kylie du Fresne
- Story: When Cecilia’s abusive ex takes his own life and leaves her fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. A series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.
37. Tenet (2020)
- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki
- Producers: Emma Thomas, Christopher Nolan
- Story: Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
38. The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)
- Directors: Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe
- Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph
- Producers: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Kurt Albrecht
- Story: A quirky, dysfunctional family embarks on a road trip only to find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity’s unlikeliest last hope.
39. Outside the Wire (2021)
- Director: Mikael Håfström
- Cast: Anthony Mackie, Damson Idris, Emily Beecham
- Producers: Ben Pugh, Erica Steinberg, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Anthony Mackie
- Story: In the near future, a drone pilot sent into a war zone finds himself paired with a top-secret android officer on a mission to stop a nuclear attack.
40. Free Guy (2021)
- Director: Shawn Levy
- Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi
- Producers: Ryan Reynolds, Shawn Levy, Sarah Schechter
- Story: A bank teller discovers that he’s actually an NPC inside a brutal, open-world video game.
41. The Adam Project (2022)
- Director: Shawn Levy
- Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Garner
- Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger
- Story: A time-traveling pilot teams up with his younger self and his late father to come to terms with his past while saving the future.
42. M3GAN (2023)
- Director: Gerard Johnstone
- Producers: James Wan, Jason Blum, Akiva Goldsman
- Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Jenna Davis
- Story: Gemma, a brilliant robotics engineer, creates a life-sized AI doll named M3GAN to be a companion to her orphaned niece, Cady. M3GAN becomes overprotective of Cady and takes her role as guardian a bit too seriously, leading to increasingly violent consequences.
43. The Creator (2023)
- Director: Gareth Edwards
- Producers: Denis Villeneuve, Scott Spiegel, Mary Parent
- Cast: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Ken Watanabe
- Story: In a war-torn future where humanity struggles against advanced AI creations, Joshua, a hardened soldier, is tasked with hunting down the mysterious Creator – the being who designed the AI program threatening civilization.
These movies about artificial intelligence provide a wide range of perspectives on AI and its impact, from thought-provoking dramas to action-packed thrillers.
