Artificial Intelligence Mobility, Emotion, and Companionship in <i>After Yang</i>

The increasing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the personal domains of human existence has redrawn the lines between technology and emotion, commodity and companionship. As AI grows increasingly adept at communing with us, speaking to us, and, at times, thinking for us, it begins to enter the personal space once designated for human-to-human interaction. However, the concept of AI mobility is not new. Much before it became a personal assistant or a conversational partner, films imagined sentient systems that could walk, learn, and feel. The article examines After Yang , a film that depicts a near future in which androids, or “technosapiens” live alongside humans, often as family members, sharing their emotional and social lives. We investigate the mobility of AI, the aesthetics of emotion, and the development of AI companionship, as it relates to the present time. After Yang urges us to consider how technology, when it becomes social and intimate, affects us, and is affected by us; learns from us, as we learn from it, and altogether reshapes the idea of being human, and how technobias, at its foundation, may be a sort of anthropobias.