Fictional female robots have a long history, and it's often quite dark

Alex Garland's 2015 film Ex Machina and Sierra Greer's Annie Bot (pictured below) follow a long tradition of female robots This year's Arthur C. Clarke award for the year's best science fiction novel was awarded last month to Sierra Greer's Annie Bot. Over the course of the novel, Annie, a sentient sex robot programmed to adore her selfish owner, gradually develops a sense of personhood – but she is hardly the first artificial woman to do so. Although the earliest fictional female robots were little more than wind-up toys, they have steadily gained substance until more recent artificial women, like Annie, have become as complex as their human counterparts. Artificial people are both ancient and ubiquitous. "Basically every culture around the world since recorded history has told stories about automatons," says Lisa Yaszek at the Georgia Institute of Technology.