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June 25 (UPI) -- The prestigious Criterion Collection will air more than a dozen historical and modern films that foreshadowed developments in artificial intelligence and its impacts on humanity on its standalone streaming platform, the Criterion Channel. The company, established in 1984 to publish "important classic and contemporary films from around the world," will begin offering the films on July 1, according to a news release.
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The collection of films comes at a time when artificial intelligence is making its way "from the realm of science fiction into everyday life," the company said.
Concerns regarding the effects of A.I. on humanity have been growing amid recent developments in generative AI such as the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT tool. Sen. Chuck Schumer recently outlined a new effort to regulate artificial intelligence while President Joe Biden recently met with AI developers in San Francisco to discuss risk management.
The Criterion Collection said the films explore how "this brave new world has been envisioned, in all its wonder and dread."
"The uncanny concept of AI has inspired some of the most dazzlingly imaginative films ever made, stoking philosophical questions about the possibilities and perils of technology, the relationship between the mechanical and the biological, and the very essence of what makes us human," the company said.
Among recent films in the collection is the 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence starring Haley Joel Osment as a prototype android programmed to experience love in a post-apocalyptic 22nd Century future ravaged by climate change.
The collection includes the 1995 animated film Ghost in the Shell, based on a manga of the same name, about a near-future world where the human brain can be placed inside mechanical shells in a plot that explores the definitions of human consciousness. In it, an AI project is created to manipulate politics. The animated film was chosen for the collection over the 2017 remake featuring Scarlett Johansson.
However, Scarlett Johansson does make an appearance in the collection for her voice role in Her, the Oscar-winning 2013 flick from director Spike Jonze. That film features Johansson as the voice model for the world's first artificially intelligent operating system which the main character, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with.
The feature films range from 1974's Dark Star and Zardoz to the more recent After Yang and Life After BOB: The Chalice Study, both released in 2021. The collection will also air Björk's 1999 music video for the Icelandic singer's 1997 song "All Is Full of Love" and two other short films.
