The Speculative Secret: Shades of Neo-Noir in the AI Film

Garnering equal reactions of celebration and anxiety, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most prevalent topics of discourse in the current era. It is little surprise that in the last two decades, the topic has found increasing relevance in cinema, with recent big-budget feature films such as The Creator (2023) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) developing from earlier touchstones such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Blade Runner (1982) and 2001: Space Odyssey (1968). Given AI’s intersection between science and technology, it appears logical that its filmic depictions have been firmly grounded in the genre of Science-Fiction (Sci-Fi). However, a selection of Sci-Fi films which have engaged with AI, specifically, those which have focalised this topic through the figure of the synthetic being, have been marked by a parallel generic tendency, namely, the Neo-Noir. With reference to the texts Ex Machina (2015) and Upgrade (2018), this paper argues that the repetition of Neo-Noir elements in the AI film marks a significant tendency in the cultural treatment of AI. Notably, the generic shift in the AI film inaugurates a philosophical shift away from the typically Sci-Fi notions of speculation, extrapolation, and impossibility towards ideas of implication, enjoyment, and the non-rapport between the human and the synthetic being. Such a philosophical reframing of the AI film has the potential to consider the permeation of this technology within the contemporary social order from a novel critical perspective.