AI, artificial intelligence, the movie show the opposite side of AI, one that is all human centered.
In the 22nd century,
rising sea levels from
global warming have wiped out 99% of existing cities, reducing the world's population.
Mecha humanoid robots have been created as replacements.
In
Madison, New Jersey, David, an 11-year-old prototype Mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Henry Swinton and his wife Monica, whose son Martin is in
suspended animation after contracting a rare disease. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates his
imprinting protocol. Wanting her to love him in return, he befriends Teddy, Martin's old robotic teddy bear.
After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. David enters his adoptive parents' room that night, but Monica turns over and is poked in the eye by the scissors. While Henry attends to her wounds, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. During a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. He grabs Martin, causing them to fall into the pool. While Martin is rescued, David is accused of endangering living people.
Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction. En route, she instead spares David by abandoning him in the woods full of scrap metal and obsolete Mecha. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recalls
The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find the
Blue Fairy to become human, which he believes will regain Monica's love.
David and Teddy are captured by the "Flesh Fair", a traveling circus-like event at which obsolete Mecha are destroyed in front of jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life, and the audience revolts and allows David to escape with Gigolo Joe, a prostitute Mecha on the run after being framed for murder. David, Teddy and Joe go to the decadent
resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a
holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of
Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of
New York City and provides fairy tale information that David interprets as suggesting that a Blue Fairy can help him.
Above the ruins of New York, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire. David finds copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy before Joe rescues him in an
amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe with an
electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on
Coney Island. The two become trapped when the
Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing that the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.
Two thousand years later, humanity is
extinct and
Manhattan is
buried under glacial ice. Mecha have evolved into
an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes.
