Set in a futuristic society, the film stars Haley Joel Osment as David, a childlike android uniquely programmed with the ability to love.

The film languished in development hell for years, partly because Kubrick felt that computer-generated imagery was not advanced enough to create the David character, which he believed no child actor would convincingly portray.

[4][5][6][7][8] In the 22nd century, rising sea levels from global warming have wiped out coastal cities and altered the world's climate.

With the human population in decline, advanced nations have created humanoid robots called mechas to fulfill various roles in society.

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.

After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair.

That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room, but as Monica turns over, the scissors accidentally poke her in the eye.

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 mechas are destroyed in front of jeering crowds.

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.

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.

Mechas have evolved into an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy.

Stanley Kubrick began development on an adaptation of "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" in the late 1970s, hiring the story's author, Brian Aldiss, to write a film treatment.

[17] Dennis Muren and Ned Gorman, who worked on Jurassic Park, became visual effects supervisors,[14] but Kubrick was displeased with their previsualization, and with the expense of hiring Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Stan Winston Studio.

[20] In early 1994, the film was in pre-production with Christopher "Fangorn" Baker as concept artist and Sara Maitland assisting on the story, which gave it "a feminist fairy-tale focus".

"We tried to construct a little boy with a movable rubber face to see whether we could make it look appealing," producer Jan Harlan reflected.

[28] Pre-production was briefly halted during February 2000 because Spielberg pondered directing other projects, which were Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Minority Report and Memoirs of a Geisha.

[33] Spielberg copied Kubrick's obsessively secretive approach to filmmaking by refusing to give the complete script to cast and crew, banning press from the set, and making actors sign confidentiality agreements.

For instance, Jack Angel, who voiced Teddy, recorded his lines entirely out of context, only receiving direction to sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, except "very wise and old and stoic".

[23][35] Costume designer Bob Ringwood studied pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip for his influence on the Rouge City extras.

[38] A. O. Scott notes Spielberg's homages to Kubrick, "sly references to A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and predominantly 2001: A Space Odyssey" as well as Collodi's Pinocchio.

The original score was composed and conducted by John Williams and features singers Lara Fabian on two songs and Josh Groban on one.

Artificial Intelligence was released on VHS and DVD in the United States by DreamWorks Home Entertainment and Touchstone Home Video on March 5, 2002[45][46] in widescreen and fullscreen two-disc special editions featuring an extensive sixteen-part documentary detailing the film's development, production, visual effects, sound design and music.

The website's critical consensus reads: "A curious, not always seamless, amalgamation of Kubrick's chilly bleakness and Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism.

"[56] A. O. Scott writes: "Mr. Spielberg seems to be attempting the improbable feat of melding Kubrick's chilly, analytical style with his own warmer, needier sensibility.

He tells the story slowly and films it with lucid, mesmerizing objectivity, creating a mood as layered, dissonant and strange as John Williams's unusually restrained, modernist score."

He concludes: "The very end somehow fuses the cathartic comfort of infantile wish fulfillment -- the dream that the first perfect love whose loss we experience as the fall from Eden might be restored -- with a feeling almost too terrible to acknowledge or to name.

[59] Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives the film two stars out of four in his Movie Guide, writing, "[The] intriguing story draws us in, thanks in part to Osment's exceptional performance, but takes several wrong turns; ultimately, it just doesn't work.

as "a very great and deeply misunderstood film", noting that Andrew Sarris, Stan Brakhage and James Naremore "more or less" agreed with this assessment.

[66][failed verification] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine gave a mixed review, concluding, "Spielberg cannot live up to Kubrick's darker side of the future", but still put the film on his top ten list that year.