To coincide with the release of his new film, Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg has revisited his earlier work — including 2001's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence — a project he inherited from his late friend Stanley Kubrick. The article argues that, 25 years on, this divisive science-fiction film stands as one of Spielberg's most ambitious and accomplished works, and one whose themes have grown more relevant as artificial intelligence becomes an ever-greater presence in everyday life.

Kubrick had developed the film for years, drawing on Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long, and had once asked Spielberg to direct it. After Kubrick died in 1999, his family invited Spielberg to complete the project, prompting him to leave the Harry Potter adaptation (taken over by Chris Columbus). Released in 2001, the film follows David (Haley Joel Osment), an android programmed to love who is abandoned by his human family and sets out to become "real". The article contends that its blend of Kubrick's cold futurism and Spielberg's sentimentality makes it a uniquely layered work in his career.