In tech thriller Companion, the perfect girlfriend breaks free from her programming. Iris (Yellowjackets‘ Sophie Thatcher) is the AI robot companion to Josh (The Boys‘ Jack Quaid); over a holiday weekend with friends, she mysteriously glitches out of her role.
io9 sat down with Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows), Lukas Gage (Smile 2), and Megan Suri (It Lives Inside) to talk about the very real future in which companion robots might be normalized like in the film. “They exist right now,” Guillen and Suri exclaimed about current real-world prototypes like the Tesla Bot.
“Maybe not as realistic of an extent that it seems like in this movie,” Suri added. Her character, Kat, is the most apprehensive of Sophie Thatcher’s Iris—even before the robot begins to malfunction.
The trio play witness to Iris gaining control of her programming, which if sci-fi stories are any indication will lead to certain danger. “It’s so scary,” Gage said when we described the possibility of cute characters in theme parks being released into the environment as entertaining meet and greets. “It’s scary and it’s terrifying,” Suri added.
“It’s exciting but terrifying sometimes,” Guillén admitted, and Gage piped in, “The Tesla bots.”
“Those things are just terrifying.” Suri concurred, and Gage added, “Yeah, they’re just… I can even look at those.”
We pointed out that at least the robots we’ve seen at theme parks have been cute and non-threatening, like the Star Wars droids at Galaxy’s Edge. We also mentioned that we’d be okay if Guillén’s beloved Perrito from the Shrek Universe’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish became a robot dog roaming DreamWorks Land at Universal Studios Florida—something the actors all agreed would be fun (rather than scary) to see.
Companion is out now in theaters.
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