It’s time once again to dive into the dark side of machine intelligence, because there’s a new video of robots watching the trailer for Morgan—the Luke Scott-directed flick about a bioengineered chick with a penchant for the ol’ stabby stabby— and it is a rich seven-layered cake of creepiness.
Morgan, for those who haven’t seen the trailer (below), stars Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rosie Leslie (Ygritte from Game of Thrones!) and Paul Giamatti, among others. It has a seemingly Ex Machina-like plot, with a female alt-human and a bunch of researchers finding themselves in a Pandora’s Box-type situation. Although, unlike the superintelligent A.I. that was Ava, Morgan is “the next step in evolution… bioengineered with synthetic DNA” and the apparent ability to toss large objects like Eleven.
Speaking of the next step in evolution, the robots watching the Morgan trailer in the above video—which comes via /Film— are EDI (which stands for Electronic Deceptive Intelligence) on the left, and FACE (or Facial Automation for Conveying Emotions). And throughout the trailer, which is dense with creep in itself (that music can only be made by devil-children), their reactions are exceptionally disturbing. Like this:
Although FACE, built by researchers at the University of Pisa, doesn’t do much more than turn her head, make soul-chilling eye contact, and brandish a smile that cutely says “gonna kill you!”, EDI, built by magicLab, definitely nails the role of viewer watching something scary. At around 1:15 EDI says “oh no, I can’t watch,” and covers his eyes, and he even comments on that creepy music (again, had to have been made by devil-children).
Morgan is out in theaters on September 2, but if you need to further satiate your robo-curiosities right now, there’s more EDI and FACE in this BTS video featuring the researchers behind the bots. You can also watch EDI’s TED Talk, which features him and his maker performing magic tricks and generally demonstrating how robots are going to learn how to manipulate our emotions.
But before the bots do learn how to manipulate us, let us know what you think about the Morgan trailer, these machines, and that lullaby from Hell in the comments below!
Images: 20th Century Fox
