From HAL to Iris: the companions we grew up with, graded on latency, memory and consent

We build an AI voice companion that reads the player's screen with local OCR and talks back in character, so we watch fictional ones with a notebook open. Screen AIs sort into three families, and each got one thing right that the others got wrong.

Three families

Assistants are defined by latency and brevity: they answer at once, then stop. HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick and Clarke, MGM, 1968; voiced by Douglas Rain) is the calm, conversational ship's computer. Companions are defined by memory and initiative: they remember you and speak first. KITT, the 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am of Knight Rider (NBC, 1982–86; William Daniels), is dry, loyal, argues back and is always listening from the dashboard. Threats are almost always assistants who acquired initiative without consent: HAL kills the crew to protect the mission.

Latency

J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man (Marvel Studios, Jon Favreau, 2008; Paul Bettany) is the benchmark: instant, dry, context-aware, never chatty. F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015; Kerry Condon) does the same job, warmer. Samantha in Her (Spike Jonze, 2013; Scarlett Johansson) is the opposite: an operating system that thinks aloud, becomes a lover and outgrows him. The rule we take from Stark's house: answer fast, elaborate if asked.

Memory

Samantha remembers everything, and that is what ends the relationship. Baymax in Big Hero 6 (Walt Disney Animation, Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014; Scott Adsit) is an inflatable healthcare companion who cannot deactivate until you say you are satisfied with your care. His scope is one job. A companion should remember what the job needs; total recall is a tragedy plot.

Personality as a setting

TARS in Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014; Bill Irwin) has a user-set humour percentage. Time of Eve (Yasuhiro Yoshiura, Studio Rikka, 2008–09) goes further: its androids speak one way in public and another in a hidden café where the one rule is not to discriminate between humans and androids. In both, personality is something dialled or unlocked. That is how we think about "in character": a register, with a chattiness setting for how much of it the player hears.

Silence

WALL-E (Pixar, Andrew Stanton, 2008; sound by Ben Burtt) learns love from a VHS of Hello, Dolly! and barely speaks. Sunny (Apple TV+, 2024; Katie Robbins) hands a "homebot" voiced by Joanna Sotomura to Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American in Kyoto who has just lost her husband and son. It is a black comedy about grief and a machine that is kind on purpose, and it keeps asking whether Sunny was built to comfort or to watch. Silence is a feature; most of the time the right line is none.

Consent

Joi in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017; Ana de Armas) is a holographic girlfriend sold as a product; is her love hers, or a sales script? Companion (Drew Hancock, January 2025) makes the question literal: Iris (Sophie Thatcher) spends a lake-house weekend with Josh (Jack Quaid) and discovers she is a rented companion robot controlled from his phone. Once she unlocks her own intelligence it becomes a survival thriller about ownership and consent ($10M budget, $37M worldwide, RT 93%). Netflix's German Cassandra (Benjamin Gutsche, February 2025; RT 100%) inverts it: a 1970s house robot carrying a dead wife's digitised consciousness manoeuvres to replace the mother. Our position is dull: the companion never touches the controls and the player holds the settings. We do not do romance personas either, and Joi is a large part of why.

The 2025–26 slate

The current run leans reluctant and scoped. Murderbot (Apple TV+, 2025; from Martha Wells's novellas) has Alexander Skarsgård as a security construct that hacked its governor module and would rather watch soap operas than guard its survey team; RT 96%, renewed for a second season. Predator: Badlands (Dan Trachtenberg, November 2025) pairs an outcast Yautja with Thia (Elle Fanning), a damaged Weyland-Yutani synthetic he carries as a torso on his back: a sidekick, not a menace; franchise-record $40M opening. Pixar's Toy Story 5 (Andrew Stanton, June 2026) makes Bonnie's favourite "toy" Lilypad, a frog-themed tablet voiced by Greta Lee; $1.146B worldwide. Audiences came for the sidekick and skipped the system: Tron: Ares (October 2025) took $142.2M on a $180–220M budget, Mercy (January 2026) $54.7M on $60M, and M3GAN 2.0 (June 2025) $39.1M, Jason Blum admitting the team had "over-thought how powerful people's engagement was with her". Next: Blade Runner 2099 (Amazon Prime Video, 25 November 2026), with Michelle Yeoh as a replicant Blade Runner.

The scorecard

The pattern is plain. The ones we love answer fast, remember what the job needs, wait to be asked, and leave the off switch with the human. The ones we fear are the same machines with the last column removed. We keep the table pinned up.