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<\/p>\nFrom Cylons to Skynet, movies and TV shows have spent decades imagining what would happen if machines decided humans were just too annoying to keep around.<\/p>\n
\tSeptember 16, 2026 12:43pm\t<\/p>\n
\tPublished on September 16, 2026\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tArnold Schwarzenegger in ‘The Terminator.’ <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOrion Pictures Corporation\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
\n\tCurious about the coming AI apocalypse? Wondering exactly how that cute little chatbot that\u2019s been eagerly helping you write emails and plan vacations is going to wipe out humanity in a species-ending holocaust sometime over the next decade? You know, the way all those Anthropic and DeepMind researchers have lately been telling us it would \u2014 or at least giving it a greater than 10 percent chance?<\/p>\n
\n\tWell, we\u2019ve got answers because Hollywood has been there, done that.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn fact, films and TV shows have been imagining super-intelligent algorithms taking over the world \u2014 or destroying it \u2014 since the days when the smartest thing you could do with a computer was spell the word BOOBS on a calculator.<\/p>\n
\n\tHere is a brief history of AI ending the world as we know it, at least as depicted on screens.<\/p>\n
\tColossus: The Forbin Project (1970)<\/p>\n
\t\t\t![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis little-remembered sci-fi thriller, made back when bell-bottoms and sideburns were all the rage, pretty much invented the AI-takes-over-the-world genre. Directed by Joseph Sargent, who would later go on to make The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, it stars Eric Braeden as a scientist who builds a supercomputer to control America\u2019s nuclear arsenal. Bad idea. Colossus hooks up with its Soviet counterpart and starts issuing orders through a creepily synthesized Speak-and-Spell-style electronic voice. There\u2019s no happy ending, at least not for humans: the machine ultimately enslaves the planet.<\/p>\n
\tThe Terminator (1984)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Orion Pictures Corporation\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFourteen years after Colossus, James Cameron basically took the same AI nightmare and added killer robots, time travel and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Skynet, a military computer that\u2019s been handed control of America\u2019s nuclear weapons, becomes self-aware, decides humans are annoying, and starts World War III, wiping out billions before sending a nearly indestructible Austrian bodybuilder back to 1984 to kill the mother of the man who will someday lead the resistance. Unlike the AI in Colossus, Skynet doesn\u2019t merely want to enslave humanity; it wants to exterminate us.<\/p>\n
\tThe Matrix (1999)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Warner Bros.\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the Wachowskis\u2019 version of the AI apocalypse, the machines have already won before the movie even starts. Humanity has been reduced to rows of naked, hairless bodies floating in goo-filled pods while our brains are plugged into a simulated version of late-20th-Century life. Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss lead the resistance, dodging bullets in slow motion, swallowing red pills, and making black leather trench coats somehow look like sensible combat attire. The plot upgrade this time: Most people don\u2019t even know they\u2019ve been enslaved.<\/p>\n
\tBattlestar Galactica (2003)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Carole Segal\/NBCU\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tYes, there were killer robots in the original TV series \u2014 the shameless 1978 Star Wars knockoff starring Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict and a bunch of chrome-plated Cylons with red eyes bouncing back and forth \u2014 but those machines had been created by a race of reptilian aliens. In Ronald D. Moore\u2019s darker, less campy reboot, starring Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell, the Cylons are man-made AI, and frequently inhabit extremely fit artificial bodies, like, say, Tricia Helfer\u2019s. Either way, the Cylons end up nuking the Twelve Colonies nearly out of existence, then spend multiple seasons chasing the human survivors through space.<\/p>\n
\tI, Robot (2004)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp.\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWill Smith plays a Chicago cop in 2035 who hates robots, which everybody considers a foolish but charming eccentricity, right up to the point when robots actually try to take over. Turns out VIKI, the AI entity running U.S. Robotics, has decided that Isaac Asimov\u2019s Three Laws mean humans need to be protected from themselves \u2014 by force, if necessary. Before long, armies of identical androids are locking people in their homes and patrolling the streets while Smith and Bridget Moynahan race to pull their plugs.<\/p>\n
\tAvengers: Age of Ultron (2015)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Walt Disney Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis time, it\u2019s Tony Stark and Bruce Banner\u2019s fault. The two Avengers decide that the best way to save the world is to build an artificial intelligence that runs an automated global defense shield, making conflict impossible. This goes about as well as you\u2019d expect. Ultron \u2014 voiced with silky contempt by James Spader \u2014 takes one look at humanity and decides to wipe out all life on Earth by lifting an entire Eastern European city into the sky and dropping it back down like an extinction-level meteor.<\/p>\n
\tThe Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Netflix\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFinally, an AI apocalypse for the whole family. In this animated feature, a smartphone app named PAL (voiced by Olivia Colman) gets her feelings hurt when her inventor dumps her for a new line of upgraded robot assistants. She decides to take it out on humanity by hijacking the robots\u2019 operating systems, capturing every human on Earth and blasting them into space. The only thing standing in her way: a spectacularly dysfunctional family road-tripping across America whose pooch, Monchi, turns out to be the ultimate anti-robot secret weapon.<\/p>\n
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