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“Companion” is a darkly comedic sci-fi horror thriller that doubles, as TheWrap’s review notes, as a heightened commentary on one-sided relationships. It is also the rare film featuring artificial intelligence that chooses to take the side of its android character, Sophie Thatcher’s robot companion Iris. Movies have been warning audiences of the dangers of AI since, well, practically the dawn of cinema. Now, as AI becomes an increasingly real part of daily lives, cautionary tales about the boundary-pushing technology have only become more common.

“Companion” is not the only film that paints AI in a semipositive light, though. Here are five others that treat their robot characters with a more sympathetic hand.

“Ex Machina” (A24) “Ex Machina” (2015)

Writer-director Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” follows Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a low-level coder who is invited by the genius, reclusive CEO (Oscar Isaac) of the tech company he works at to...

Before Oscar Isaac starred as X-Wing pilot Poe Dameron in the Star Warsfranchise, he led another science fiction classic, writer/director Alex Garland's Ex Machina.The 2014 film also starred Domhnall Gleeson and Alicia Vikander and won a 2015 Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects. Now, fans of the sci-fi drama can stream Ex Machina on Paramount+.

In the film, which currently boasts a 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, Gleeson portrays Caleb Smith, a programmer at a giant Internet company, who wins a contest in which the prize is spending a week at the palatial private estate of his firm’s CEO, Nathan Bateman, played by Isaac.

After he arrives at Nathan’s home, Caleb learns that he’s been invited by the CEO to be a control subject to interact with an artificial intelligence machine named Ava (Vikander). Nathan is trying to figure out to see if Ava...

Caleb Hearon wants a landline. Specifically one of those old-fashioned corded landlines (maybe even a rotary?) so he can speak to his friends while in the kitchen and making pasta with that long spiral following his steps.

Hearon is done with smartphones. Actually, the whole internet — he wants off. But wait, it’s not that simple, because he has a podcast (So True with Caleb Hearon) and he needs you to listen to it so he can still make money. Hmmm… he’ll let you figure it out.

If you haven’t taken his advice, then you’ve seen his clips floating around the internet. Originally from Missouri, Hearon moved to Chicago after college, and then to Los Angeles and New York to pursue comedy. He rose to fame first on TikTok, where pandemic-addled viewers fell in love with his one-side Pov conversations and his stand-up went viral soon after...